


Something About This Place

by SevenBetter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A quarantine love story, Anyways, Ben has a massive brownstone, Boston, Brief mentions of mortality, Domestic Fluff, Eventual Romance, F/M, Helicopters, Illnesses, Just the one time tho, Kylo has 85 bottles of wine in his basement, Kylo's Jaguar will make a brief appearance, Mutual Masturbation, New York, Orgasm Delay, Phone Sex, Protective Kylo Ren, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey is obsessed with Lady Gaga, Rey shares a room in a shitty apartment, She needs two things actually, Slightly Dominant Kylo Ren, Smut, The sweet ambrosia of a breakfast sandwich on a spring morning in New York City, The vast New England wilderness that lies between them, Touch-Starved, Trains, a hug and universal healthcare, basically several unexpected forms of transportation, but have no fear, graphic depictions of an ugly puzzle, graphic depictions of low quality underwear, look I just got really attached to the idea that he would offer to take care of her okay, no one dies, non-perishable foods, oh no social isolation what do???, pandemic-level to be clear, people aren't here for car stuff liz, superfluous use of italics, tags will update as story proceeds, tipsy hookups, towncars, why am i talking about the cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23339080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenBetter/pseuds/SevenBetter
Summary: Rey stands just next to the tracks, a week's worth of clothes and her laptop bag resting atop a salt-crusted mound of snow at her feet. She stares up at the immobile train.She has no idea where she's going to go. No idea what she's going to do.Before she can come up with even half a solution, her phone starts buzzing. Lady Gaga's Edge of Glory blasts from her pocket.She glances down at the screen. 'KYLO NYC SEX' stares back at her.On the last ring, her finger swipes across the cold glass. "Uh, hello?"--------------------What's up folks, I'm coping with my extreme anxiety over COVID by writing it into a fic.
Relationships: Background relationships - Relationship, Finn/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 112
Kudos: 444





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, this is a story centered around the coronavirus. Large numbers of people are dying, and the medical system here in the U.S.A. is rapidly speeding towards a burden it cannot support. I am acutely aware of all of this.
> 
> I am terrified. I am doing everything I can to help, which isn't much, therefore it doesn't bring me much solace. 
> 
> And since I was eighteen, I have coped by taking my anxieties and carefully building fictional stories around them. Inserting my fears into worlds I can control.
> 
> That's exactly what I am doing now. Trying to lend myself a sense of comfort and control. I sincerely hope that doesn't bother anyone, and thanks for reading.

Rey blinks awake as the train comes to a stop. 

A screeching stop. Much more abrupt than any others so far. It isn't the first time she's taken this trip, she's pretty sure she knows the ropes. So as she pulls out her phone and taps the little compass arrow in Maps, she's pretty confident they weren't meant to stop at a tiny depot in...Foster, Rhode Island.

_What?_

Her four-seat section is occupied only by Rey herself, so she leans into the aisle and makes eye contact with a nearby passenger, who looks equally befuddled. She asks anyway.

"Any idea why we stopped?"

The man is a stuffy business-looking type, with the Wall Street Journal held aloft. He frowns and shakes his head. "Boston train, right?" Rey nods. "Next stop shoulda been Providence."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too." Rey cranes to look out the window in either direction, but there's nothing to see, just long, waving grass and some scrubby bushes, plus the start of thin trees about fifty feet off. All of it's blanketed by snow and muted under a sky that's been gray for nearly a week.

A woman pops up about ten rows down, phone held to her ear. Her eyes are wide and her hair's in a sloppy bun. "You're sure? It's not just a rumor? Okay."

The other thirty-odd people immediately quiet down as she raises her voice. "A friend of mine is in the First Class car up ahead. A train worker told her someone on the the train's been feeling sick, and they just got a call that they tested positive."

There's a long, tense moment of silence.

Then a million voices erupt.

_"Wait, positive for COVID??"_

_"How long have they known? Don't those tests take up to five days to come back?"_

_"What the fuck are they doing on the train? Why didn't they quarantine?"_

The businessman's voice raises above all the rest. "So why did we stop?"

Everyone else's comments peter out as they consider it.

Why did they stop?

It's not like they're near a hospital. Who knows where the sick person lives, or if they're in need of more acute medical attention.

Before anyone can speculate, a conductor slides back the door to their car, looking grave.

"You probably already heard?" He says, sounding resigned. A few _yeahs_ are voiced. "The CDC ordered us to stop the train. The sick person has been quarantine in a car by themselves, and will be kept there until private transportation can be arranged."

"Will the train be heading onto Providence?" Businessman asks.

"No, because it's a known case this train has to be decontaminated. You are all welcome to stay inside this car until the new train arrives, but we will need to wait for a new one before we can continue on."

"Are all of us going to have to be tested?" someone else shouts.

"No." There's a collective sigh. "But they recommend that all of you undergo the advised two-week total isolation."

" _Total isolation?_ " 

"Yes. Current guidelines are for total separation from as many other people as possible." 

Rey clenches her jaw.

A year ago, hell, _three months ago_ , she might have been able to do it. Living with Finn and Rose, in their drafty two-bedroom apartment in Sommerville, she could have walled herself off in her bedroom and had access to the en-suite. Rose could have dropped meals at her door, and every minute she didn't spend coding, she could be on Netflix.

But money got tighter, after work stopped subsidizing her T-pass and she'd had to get that suspicious mole on her back removed. And when the lease was up, Rose and Finn got their own place.

So Rey joined a group of five former classmates, in their tiny Southie townhouse. She shares a bathroom with three others; she shares a bedroom with Kaydel, and she's confident that no matter how hard they tried, they wouldn't be able to maintain six feet of distance. She doubts there's six feet of space between their beds.

Finn and Rose are already back in Boston. She took the latest train out of all of them. Which means there's no empty apartment where she could stay even for one night. Just as a buffer, to give her a chance to sort things out.

Massachusetts has state mandated health care coverage; Rey _has_ insurance. But it isn't good. If she _had_ to go to the hospital, she's positive she'd be walking out with a five-figure bill and no way to pay it off. She can't get sick, it's simply not an option. A prickle of anxiety rises in her belly.

She glances around the car, back out at the whipping grass. Rey's a capable person. Tough, resourceful, strong both physically and mentally. With a life like she's had, it either breaks you or hardens you. And Rey reckons it's turned her into bulletproof glass.

Which is why it feels so startling when, for the first time in years, Rey feels afraid.

\-------

By the third hour, everyone is restless.

Rey's still not sure how she's going to proceed: should she text Kaydel, ask her to go home and stay with her parents? But Kaydel is a nurse at the Brigham, which means she won't be asked to stay home any time soon, and she's needed in Boston. Samantha, another roommate, is a supervisor at a water treatment plant, so she's not likely to get called away from work anytime soon either. 

Should she swap apartments with Finn and Rose?

No. She can't ask a newly married couple to spend their third week of marital bliss sharing a bedroom with an old college friend of theirs. 

When the conductor gives them permission to get some fresh air, she jumps at the opportunity. She doesn't mind the tumble of grimy snow piled around the tracks, or the occasional biting breeze, she's just grateful to be out and away from all those people. She sets her bags on a small hill of snow and begins to pace around.

It's then that she finally considers where she just came from.

Poe's fancy apartment in Brooklyn. The tiny extra bedroom, more of a large closet, where she stayed during her job interviews then during Finn and Rose's brief visit.

She whips out her phone with one hand clad in a fingerless glove, wincing at the biting air as she taps the screen. Fingers flying, she composes a text.

" _Hey, I don't know how else to say this, but I don't think I can go back to Boston. Someone on my train has COVID and they're telling us to quarantine. I don't know how I can do that back home. I know this is asking so much, but I don't think I have anywhere else I can isolate. Could I stay in your spare room? It would be at least two weeks_."

She should probably just call him. Poe will undoubtedly have questions, which she may or may not be able to answer, but at the very least, they'll be in active conversation.

But she can't. This ask is too big, she doesn't want to actually verbalize the request, so she holds a stinging finger over the blue arrow for a moment before pressing down and accepting her fate, whatever it may be.

The very second the message appears in a blue bubble, Lady Gaga's Edge of Glory blasts from the speaker.

**_KYLO NYC SEX_ **

She blinks. Feels a wash of nervousness flush through her. Then the memory, tinged with liquor and the smell of cologne, rushes back to her.

TWO NIGHTS EARLIER

"You're definitely not gonna remember why you saved my number." He accuses, as they wait for their coats to be brought from the rack behind the hostess station.

She leans against the marble pillar next to him, blatantly denying to herself that she _needs_ to be leaning on something, and narrows her eyes. He does it back, mocking, "I'm not that wasted, thank you very much. I'm making a perfectly cognitive decision here."

He barks a laugh. "You mean _cognizant_ decision?" He hiccups.

"Whatever, you know what I meant." She raises her phone back up, demanding the last four digits of his number, which he dutifully recites. Then when she's adding him as a contact, she narrows her eyes again. She feels a grin creep slowly across her mouth. As he turns and holds out her lavender puffer jacket, she sticks the phone towards him. 

He reads the name she's chosen, all three descriptive words of it, then looks up at her. There's something warm and knowing in his gaze, so sharp in its intimacy it stops her breath. 

"Think that'll jog my memory?" She manages to squeak out.

He looks nervous suddenly, opening his mouth just to close it, then finally, his lips part again. "By the time this night is over, I think I'll have given you a few good reasons to remember my name." 

Her breath stops again: this time at his seriousness, his absolute certainty that he's going to please her. Really please her.

_Talk about Big Dick Energy._

\-------

She hesitates as long as she can, then on the last ring, answers.

"Uh, hello?"

"Rey." He says, voice low, so direct that yet more memories from two nights ago come back to her, and she shivers.

The shiver isn't from the cold.

"Yeah, hi." She says noncommittally, unsure what else to say, but certain that 'why are you calling me?' isn't the right approach.

"I wanted to let you know that..." he trails off, clears his throat, she hears some rustling.

 _What? WHAT?_ She wants to scream.

"I need to notify you that one of my coworkers has tested positive for coronavirus. And since that colleague's return from China, I have had contact with them. And since that time, you have also had...contact. With me." 

_Contact_ is one word for it, Rey supposes. 

"Even though it's secondhand, I called a friend of mine who's a virologist and she recommended that you also engage in quarantine procedures."

For some reason, one question forms before all others. "Did you tell her what happened?"

"What...happened?" He huffs. "You mean did I tell her that we slept together?" 

Her voice is muffled where her face is tucked into her scarf. "Yes."

"Of course not."

"Then what did you say?"

"That we had close contact."

"Close contact?'"

"Yes."

"Anything else?" Rey pushes.

"That we most definitely exchanged bodily fluids." 

"Oh god."

"What?" He exclaims. "That's literally all she knows. You could be any one of the millions of women in New York that night."

Rey takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, trying to ignore the way her cheeks burn in mortification. "No, yeah, you're right. I...thank you for letting me know, Kylo."

"So what's your plan?" He asks abruptly, and her eyes snap open again.

"My what?"

"Your plan. Will your employer allow you to work remotely? Do you have plenty of nonperishable foods? Enough living space to keep getting exercise and fresh air? You mentioned the other night how much you need to be outside."

She swallows, realizing just how much he remembers from their fourteen hours together, praying she didn't say anything too stupid while in the clutches of the liquor. 

"I...yes. My job can be totally remote. I was still working most of the days I was in New York, actually." As she runs through his other questions in her mind, another comment slips out unnoticed. "Your timing is so weird."

"What? What timing?"

She sighs. She can't not explain.

"My train back got stopped. Someone onboard has it too. They're sending another train to pick us up, but who knows what time I'll get back to Boston." 

"Who was it? Did you come into contact with them too? How long were you all on the train together? Has that person been removed from the train? What did the-"

"Whoa, Kylo, please chill," she insists, "The person's been isolated in an empty car. I don't think I came into contact with them, I was the first person into my car and it wasn't anyone there. My point is that even if you hadn't called, they're recommending that we isolate anyway," she scuffs her toe against a compacted patch of snow, and mutters under her breath, "so I'm gonna have to figure something out, I guess."

"Rey." He says, and _again, that seriousness in his tone, it's just-_

"What?"

"What do you mean, figure something out?"

"Nothing, nothing, I ju-"

"You already said that work wasn't an issue," he reasons aloud, "so if there's still something to figure out that must mean that you're worried about...the food thing? Or your living situation?"

"It's not a big deal Kylo, like I said, I'll fig-"

"Tell me. Tell me what's going on."

It's the same tone he used that night. The one when he told her to get on the bed. The one where he told her exactly what he was going to do with his mouth. The slightest edge of a command in it.

"Really, Kylo," she tries weakly, "it's not your problem."

He's silent for a long moment. "Let's pretend for a moment that you'd taken a different train," and Rey's brow furrows about as hard as it can, "and this passenger had not put you at risk. In that case, I would be the one and only reason you had to go into isolation. So let's pretend that's the case. And in that case, anything that prevents you from isolating is most definitely my problem. So tell me. What's going on."

She considers it for a moment, toys with a few other refutations.

But in the end, she caves.

"I had an emergency housing change recently," _only a partial lie,_ "and I'm currently living with four other people. One of which, with whom I share a room with her."

She stops pacing. She's pretty sure her grammar wasn't right just now, and she thinks about it for half a second, but _fuck it,_ she's telling him what's going on, what more can he expect from her?

She shakes it off.

"Due to those circumstances I don't see how I am supposed to self-isolate. Let alone for two weeks." 

He's quiet again, for so long that Rey pulls the phone away from her ear to check and see the call hasn't dropped. Squirming in the silence, Rey rushes to add, "But I just texted Poe. Asked if I could come back to the city and use his spare room again. I'm sure he'll say yes, so I'll go there, he can pick up some food for me, and I'll wait ou-"

"No." His voice finally comes back on the line. A single, stern word.

"I...what? What do you mean 'no?'"

"I mean no, you are not going to spend two weeks in Poe's spare room."

Instead of being a little turned on, now she's affronted by the authority in his voice. "Why the hell not?"

"Because that room is seven by eight feet and barely has a proper window." Kylo points out, and Rey's about to retort, but he's not done. "And Poe doesn't have a balcony, so short of sticking your head out of that improper window, there's no way to get any fresh air." He's still not done. " _And_ Poe's a shitty cook, so who knows what the hell he'll feed you that entire time, especially if this ends up lasting longer than two weeks, and that certainly won't be good for your immunity. And by the ti-"

"It'll be fine, Kylo, please."

"You cannot live off of Thai takeout and La Croix for two weeks, Rey. That's what Poe will doom you to."

"Well you heard everything I said! It's not like I exactly have a choice, do I?"

She's aware, suddenly, that she's screaming into the calf-high grasses in the middle of rural Rhode Island. She turns to look back at the train and finds a few fellow passengers glancing furtively in her direction.

"You do." He says, that same steeliness and certainty in his voice, and she stops pacing again. 

"What?"

"You do have a choice." He repeats. "Or rather, you have a clear alternative, which I think makes the choice for you."

She clenches her free hand into a fist. "And what might that be?"

"Come stay with me."

Her shock persists for a moment, then subsides just a fraction, enough for her to mutter, "I don't thi-"

"I have a four bedroom brownstone in Harlem, with a fenced-in yard. I anticipated that I'd have to self isolate at some point, so I'm fully stocked on non-perishables and have four other dinners already prepped in the freezer. I have the space and I have the food."

She's still shocked, still sure she wants to say no, but can't seem to find the words to do it.

"And even with that person on the train, in some way it's still my fault that this affected you, so this is my chance to make it up to you."

"By hosting me."

"Yes."

"For two entire weeks, possibly longer. While a global pandemic rages across the nation."

"Y-yes."

"Kylo," she says more softly, and hears him take in a breath on the other end of the line, "we barely know each other. I know you might feel guilty for putting me at risk of getting sick, but you don't have-"

"It's not about that," he insists, "And you're right. We do hardly know each other, but." A slow, tremulous breath, "I liked you, Rey. I like you, I think. I had fun."

"I-"

"And besides, if we get to know each other better and it turns out we don't like each other, the brownstone has three floors. It would be easy enough to stay apart 'til it's over."

She can't help but snort, and she hears his soft exhalation and pictures his equally soft smile.

She stares out at the grass.

She admits to herself that she does not want to stay in Poe's spare room. It's small, and the ceiling is low, and she's have to walk all the way across the apartment to get to the bathroom anyway. 

She admits that she doesn't know anything about Kylo, beyond that he and Poe work together. And what she learned during the eight hours they shared a bed.

But _that_ type of knowledge isn't really helpful right now. 

Nonetheless her options are few. And he's right, when she really considers it. The choice is kind of made for her.

"This is crazy," she states baldly. 

"I know. No crazier than the rest of the world, though."

"I guess that's true."

"Where are you again?"

"Uh, Foster. In Rhode Island."

"Drop me a pin, I wanna look at the map."

She pulls her phone from her ear and does so, then hears him muttering to himself, his voice tinny from being put on speakerphone. 

"Okay, I see."  
  
"Like I said," she sighs, "I have no idea when the new train is getting here, and once it does I'll have to get off in Providence and then figure out how to ge-"

"No need."

"No...no need for what?"

"The new train. You won't need it." 

"Why not?"

"I'm sending a helicopter. I need to go make the arrangements. It'll be there in less than two hours." 

"What?"

"Just be ready."

"Kyl-"

"And stay on the train til it gets there, I don't want you freezing to death before I can even protect you from this damn virus."

" _KYLO_!"

"What?"

"I...how will I know it's the right one?"

Her eyes clamp shut.

The sheer idiocy of her question washes over her.

_Of course, Rey, so many passengers will be getting whisked off in private chartered helicopters, how will you possibly know which one is Kylo's?_

"How will you know...which helicopter is the right one?"

"I didn't me-"

"Tell you what, I'll give the pilot a code word. And then you can confirm it with them before you get on. That way you don't end up in the _wrong helicopter."_

The burn of mortification is back. But there's such blatant amusement in his voice that she can't help but grin, knowing she's entertained him.

"Fine. What's the code word?"

"Hmm...Polyester."

Rey absolutely cannot control when she rolls her eyes.

\-------

"You sure you can't go straight there with me?" Rey begs, as they stand together just outside Poe's favorite French bistro. Poe's still in there, chatting up some leggy woman who works for a tech firm, while Rey and Kylo stand in the atrium of the building. 

"I have to pick up those files. I absolutely need them for a deadline tomorrow." Kylo says, the disappointment clear in his voice, tugging Rey even closer than where she was already leaning into him. 

"I think you'll probably be too hung over and too fucked out to even consider working tomorrow." She skims her fingers over the lapel of his perfectly tailored wool coat.

"Too what?" He says, his voice darkening.

"Too _fucked out_." Rey lets her mouth linger on each sound, glancing right into his eyes halfway through, and he leans forward, kissing her for the second time that night. This one is harder, more fervent than the tentative one he gave her in the hallway near the bar.

This space, between the main doors and the second set that lead into the restaurant's entryway, is shrouded in darkness, all the other businesses besides the bistro closed for the night. They're in a shadowy corner, far enough away from prying eyes that Rey slips her hand into the gap of his coat to feel the hardness of his chest, and he responds by working his fingers under the hem of her coat and into the waistband of her slacks. His fingers dig hard into her lower back, and she both wants to let it bring her closer to him but also push back into the strength of his touch.

His fingers bracket around her underwear and he tugs to one side, as though trying to get them out of the way, but with the tightness of Rey's trousers he won't be able to reach much of anywhere else. He hooks his chin over her shoulder, breathing hard, and must be looking down past the pastel expanse of her coat, because he mutters, "Are your panties like, electric yellow?"

She's distracted, caught up in thoughts of what his chest must look like under all this, so she's a little dazed when she mumbles, "What? I dunno, maybe."

"What do you mean, maybe?" 

"I mean I'm not sure. I get all my underwear from the bargain bin at like, TJ Maxx. A long as it's a size small and won't give me pantyline, it's getting purchased."

He pulls back to stare into her eyes for a moment, his hand still in the same place, then gives the underwear another seemingly experimental tug.

"Ow, god, are you trying to give me a wedgie?" She says on a confused laugh, and his face falls a little more slack, his eyebrows jumping.

"Why are they so stretchy?" 

She lets out a groan, no less turned on but frustrated for every moment he's keeping her here, every moment they're talking instead of on a bed, horizontal, with significantly fewer layers on. 

"I don't know, because it's all just spandex and polyester?!"

" _Polyester?_ " He exclaims, and he can't hide his laughter or his grin, "That cannot be good for you. It needs to breathe!"

"It?"

"You know, _it_."

"It. My vagina."

He gulps. _What is it with men and that word? They'll throw around 'pussy' like it's as innocuous as 'hello,' but one 'vagina' and they're all sweating worse than whores in church._

"Yeah. Doesn't it need like, cotton? So it can breathe?"

"It is not, in fact, a part of the respiratory system, Kylo."

"But the tissu-"

"Tell you what," she slaps him on the chest, "it can breathe when we're done having sex and I'm laying next to you naked, all right?"

He stares at her, dumbstruck, as though he just realized they are actually going to sleep together, which Rey is certain he already understood.

"Okay," he says breathlessly, and finally lets go of her underwear when his phone chimes. "Ride's here."

This was Rey's first inkling that Kylo wasn't totally...ordinary. Because when they step out of the building she was expecting an Uber or Lyft, that they would idle by the curb while he went up to grab those files he absolutely needs, then proceed to Poe's place since it's so nearby.

Instead she sees two black town cars idling. Kylo gestures to the one in front, "Head back to Poe's," then he swings his hand to the car in the back, "I'll go grab my stuff and meet you there."

"Okay," she's a little shocked, holding onto his hand until she's bending down to slide into the backseat of the car. 

She sees the heat in his gaze for one last second before he closes the door. The driver bids her a good evening and she returns the greeting, her head swimming, and through the pleasant slosh of the alcohol she reminds herself that this is not normal.

Taking the subway: normal.

Using a rideshare and adding a stop so you can pick something up from work: also normal.

Ordering two gleaming luxury cars with leather interior, that smell like pine and fresh laundry, just so you and your hookup can arrive at your eventual destination with minimal delay or hassle: definitely not normal.

Rey tips her head back, and admits something to herself.

The arousal and the attraction she feels towards this man? After only a few hours, one meal, and a few drinks in his presence?

_Also probably not normal._

_\-------_

They announced the new train would be there soon, about twenty minutes before the dull roar of helicopter blades can be heard inside the train.

Rey had hoped it might not get there til after, that she could quietly sneak off the train and hide in the trees while the new train whisked everyone else off.

But she supposes that if she's going to get airlifted out of here, she can stand to be made into a spectacle for a few moments.

The helicopter finally comes down in the shorn grass right near the train's practically nonexistent station platform, just a wooden roof on top of some steel poles, and Rey does her best to ignore the murmur of the passengers as she gets up, gathers her suitcase and laptop bag, and departs the train without another word.

She ducks as she approaches, knowing its impossible that the spinning blades could hurt her, but hunching nonetheless. She doesn't dare look back at the faces that are sure to be peering from some of the windows.

Instead she heads right to the door, which slides open when she gets close, and sees a man with a bushy beard and equally voluminous eyebrows wearing a headset and sunglasses. 

"Hey." She says, yelling to be heard over the rhythmic thumping in the air.

"Polyester?" He yells back, pointing at her.

She sighs, grateful the exasperated sound is drowned out in the din, and throws her bags into the backseat, climbing in. "Polyester!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoping everyone is safe and well.

**_TWO NIGHTS EARLIER_ **

She's barely stumbled in the door at Poe's when her phone rings. She chucks her purse on the couch and pulls her phone from her pocket, at the same time she unzips her coat. 

"Hello?"

"Hey, Rey. This is Kylo NYC Sex. Remember me?"

He sounds winded. _Is he taking the stairs? To Poe's eighth floor apartment?_

"Vaguely," she responds, fighting the grin in her voice.

"Tall? Dark hair? Mocked the color of your underwear earlier tonight?"

"Aah right, that Kylo." 

"Yeah." He says, that low, low voice tumbling over the word. She shivers in anticipation and shucks her coat, shivers again when her slightly sweaty skin meets the air of the apartment, and before she can question the impulse, she takes off her dress and tosses it into the doorway of the spare room, so that only her electric yellow lace underwear, pale pink bra, and high heeled boots remain. Perhaps not the most elegant combination, but this is really an accessory to the seduction, not the main event, so she trusts it won't be an issue.

She glances in Poe's living room mirror to settle all her cheap thrifted gold necklaces in place. A St. Christopher medal, a plain spiralized chain, a tiny lily pendant, and two others. She musses her hair, rushes to dab on a tiny bit more lipstick, while listening to his heavy breathing down the line.

"You really taking the stairs?" The alcohol's making her giggly.

"I got pretty...worked up, thinking about you in the car." He admits, voice quiet, even though it's late and she's sure he's alone in the stairwell. She likes how close he sounds. "Figured I'd do this to try and bring myself back down a little, before I'm confronted with the sight of you."

Rey's pretty sure that the next sight of her will void his current effort.

But she says nothing, nor does she put her dress back on. Instead she just grins wickedly, "You nearly here?"

Rather than reply he hangs up, right as she hears a distant door creak open and the dull thud of feet against the carpeted floor. She waits by the door, and despite the fact that she didn't climb a single stair, she feels her breathing getting fast, too. 

She swears she can feel his presence, practically vibrating through the wood, and the urge to plaster herself against it is nearly overwhelming. She compromises by pressing one palm, flat and broad, just under the peephole. He knocks, so minutely she bets he's only using a single knuckle. As she slides the door open, his eyes go half-lidded from lust and liquor to wide, at the sight of her.

In the intense light of the hallway she suddenly realizes how she must look, pink cotton bra and bargain underwear, and she feels herself flush with embarrassment. What was she thinking? 

"Hi," she attempts to step back into the darkness, but he reaches forward and grabs her by the waist, pulls her into the light a little more.

His eyes rake over her, igniting each square inch of her skin as he goes, and she holds her breath, waiting for some flicker, some sign of his response.

His jaw is tense. His hand curls around the dip in her waist, all her weight resting against his forearm pressed to her lower back, and his head tilts, to press his face into her neck. She tips her head back, allows it, forces herself to stop worrying if her perfume has worn off as he takes a big breath of her skin. 

Then, in a voice so commanding as to be utterly undeniable, he says, "Get on the bed."

She lets it sink into her for a moment, replays his words in her head, and feels goosebumps erupt across her arms and legs. He notices, kissing her shoulder as though he can kiss them away instead of realizing that the wetness of his lips and the warmth of his breath will only make it worse. 

She tears herself away from him, heeled boots forcing her to saunter in a way she normally wouldn't. But when she hears the low groan coming from behind her, she can't say she regrets it. 

She kicks the boots off the second she's in the spare room, ridding herself of her bra, too, and scoots back on the bed.

The goosebumps return as she hears footsteps tap their way towards her.

He appears in the doorway, suit jacket, coat and scarf over his arm, and throws them down near her shoes, along with a messenger bag stuffed with manila file folders.

She feels emboldened, reckless from drinking and the unquestionable lust in his eyes.

He wants her, and it makes her brave.

"Take your shirt off," she orders, in much the same tone he did, and before she can blink he's unbuttoning, pulling his tie from around his throat, then his cuffs, then finally his dress shirt is off and he's kicking away his shoes and pulling his socks off, until only a pair of fitted black suit pants is left, clinging to his muscular hips and bulging out in the front, for a reason that grows increasingly more obvious every second.

His eyes trace her the same way they did in the doorway, and for a moment, time slows down. For a moment their drunken, goofy desire gives way to an intensity, an acceptance and transcendence of one another's imperfections, an acknowledgement that this person desires you desperately, just the way you are.

In a million other hookups, Rey crossed her arms over her chest and pressed her breasts a certain way to make them look bigger. Because it was what she thought men would want.

This time, she arches her back like a cat, uncaring how it makes her breasts look, because _she_ wants to. She wants to stretch and preen and roll around, basking in his riveted attention.

He takes a step closer as she relaxes her spine and meets his eye again. "You ready?"

\-------

"You ready?" The pilot asks, breaking Rey from her dumbfounded gaze down at the cityscape of New York, with cars like ants and people only discernible if she squints. 

"For what?" She says, into the mouthpiece of her own headset. The pilot, an ex-military guy named Charles but who goes by Chewie for some awful reason, just grins and pushes on the joystick to dip the nose of the copter towards a nearby building. The roof is all dull gray concrete, with a large red square painted atop it, centered with a black X. 

They list back and forth a little, causing Rey to grab what Chewie informed her is called the "Oh shit" bar above the door. But finally they touch down, the rhythmic pulse of the blades just barely beginning to slow now that they're no longer powered.

A door at the corner of the roof opens, and Rey's expecting a driver, like the ones who drove the town cars the other night, and Rey feels guilty as she realizes she has no small bills with which to tip when they inevitably offer to carry her bags down to the car.

No need for small bills, she realizes quickly.

Because the person loping through the weathered door is Kylo.

Same black suit, with a blue tie this time, same charcoal coat, but with the collar turned up against the wind caused by the copter blades. That collar covers up the tiny flip at the ends of his hair, the little curl Rey had traced with her fingertips while he slept next to her. 

She gets pulled from the memory by the magnetic tug of his gaze, meeting hers through the windshield. 

He approaches the helicopter where she now sits alone, Chewie off speaking to a second man Rey hadn't noticed. 

She doesn't think she'd ever notice much else, if Kylo continued staring at her like this. 

"Hi." He says, hunching his shoulders a little, and right, right, it's cold, the pulsing heat Rey feels underneath her skin isn't something everyone else feels, obviously. 

"Hi," she croaks back, and then clears her throat. 

He frowns, "You need water," and pulls off the headset she's stupidly still wearing. She flushes in embarrassment, reaching up to smooth her hair, but Kylo skims his fingertips under her jaw to elevate her eyes to his once more.

"Thank you," he says simply, as though the reason for verbalizing it is obvious.

But it isn't to Rey, if anything she thinks it should be her who's thanking him, but saying 'no, thank _you'_ feels worn out and insincere, so instead she goes with, "For what?"

"For listening to me," he reaches past her to retrieve her bags, lifting both like they weigh less than a packet of Doritos, "for coming back." The gravity in his voice, the depth of gratitude in his eyes, they make her squirm. The last time he looked at her like this she was hungover, which blunted her perception of him. 

Now, she's witnessing his seriousness clearheaded, and she has absolutely no idea how to respond to it. So instead, she sticks with her best defense. Humor.

"We'll see if you're still thanking me after I've been puttering around your house for a week and a half, eating all your snacks and leaving books sitting open on every surface."

He stares at her for so long that she knows he knows she was trying to deflect. She fights desperately not to look away, but her eyes dart down to his lips as he licks them before he speaks. "I have plenty of bookmarks."

She smirks, knocking her knee against the side of his thigh gently, "And plenty of snacks?"

"And plenty of snacks. But I expect you to ration them. Who knows how long we're going to be there."

She rolls her eyes, "First thing when we get there, we'll write out a snack schedule. Sign and date it. Maybe get it notarized, if the bank is still open."

He huffs a laugh, and Rey feels a small measure of relief, that he still finds her entertaining, "Give me just a minute to talk to Chewie, and then we'll head out." 

As she watches him cross to the other corner of the roof, the absurdity of all of it hits her all at once.

_The world is slowly realizing the depth and breadth of a fairly mortal pandemic._

_She just willingly returned to the most densely populated city in the nation._

_To ride out that exact pandemic, in the home of a man she barely knows._

_A man who has seen her naked; who has probably had his mouth on more of her skin than anyone else on this earth, yet whom she still barely knows._

_She doesn't know his birthday, or his favorite bands, or exactly what he does for a living. He works for the diplomatic service, something about ensuring that consular documents are compliant with international law. That was just about the point in his explanation where Rey's tipsy brain was more interested in her little dish of creme brulee than his work, so she had nodded along while sucking slowly on her spoon, which diverted his attention pretty fast._

The point is she doesn't really know him. But something: his gentle determination to get her to return, the wryly affectionate way Poe first introduced him, something tells her she can trust him. That she might even...enjoy this time with him, once the initial awkwardness fades away. 

So when he turns away from Chewie to find her staring right at him she doesn't look away, or pretend like she had been waiting to ask him something.

Instead she just smiles, and he slowly grins back, just a small one. She vaults out of the helicopter and approaches the door, waiting til he's there and he can lead the way down the stairs. 

\-------

_Rey was not ready._

She was not ready for the feeling of Kylo's breath gusting across her sensitized skin. She was not ready for the sharp shards of pleasure every time he tugs on her nipples. She was not ready for the insane way it feels when he presses so deep into her that his pubic bone presses against her clit, just enough to make itself known, but not enough to help her _get_ anywhere, get any closer to release.

And she most certainty wasn't ready for the way his eyes keep finding hers in the near darkness, that same abrupt intimacy flaring between them, making the rest of the world grow dimmer. 

She keeps making these choked off sounds, half in pleasure and half in surprise, at the magnitude of that very pleasure. She wonders if he can see it, in her wide eyes and the astonished jump of her eyebrows. 

Judging by the way he keeps throwing his head back and stifling groans, she's mostly betting he wasn't ready either. 

"I want you behind me." She says, trying to conjure the same air of command in her words that his always carry, and he nods frantically, like he's been the one following her orders this whole time, instead of the other way around.

Rey flips on her stomach, leaning on her elbows but her body fully pressed into the bed, and sighs in relief as he sinks down on top of her, then slides back inside.

He's huge. Broad and muscled, and warm in a way Rey never is. He's been radiating heat all night, since long before they first kissed, but now Rey gets to feel it unencumbered, her shivering winter skin subsumed by his miles and miles of pale, warm flesh.

She doesn't mind the way he knees her legs wider apart so he can drive into her harder, because his endless, sweat-slicked chest stays pressed against her back, the hair on his legs rasping against her thighs, and there's harmony between their soft moans. 

She tilts her hips back into him, pressing him an infinitesimal amount deeper, and he exhales hard, taking advantage of the angle to slide one paw of a hand under her hips, sliding along the duvet until he finds her center, until he can press against her clit.

All together, the roll of his hips and the pressure of his fingers and his tongue dragging wetly over the back of her neck, they're too much. So much stimulation, dispersed among so many different points on her body, and now his relentless movement is causing her nipples to drag against the weave of the linen underneath them. 

It take every remaining brain cell she has, that isn't hurtling towards ecstasy, to whimper out, "Kylo, I- I'm gonna..."

"Come on, baby," he whispers, right next to her ear, "Rey please, I want to feel it, I want you to feel it."

And it's that, the low growl of his voice, begging her to share her climax between them, that brings it about. She feels herself tighten and contract, holding him in, her other limbs locking as she tries to ride the tidal wave crashing through her, only distantly aware of the cries she's letting out. 

She feels him seize up at her back, feels all his muscles tense, and the single arm holding himself up begins to shake.

A part of her mourns that she couldn't see those dark, fathomless eyes when he came.

She doesn't have to wait long, though. She waits til she feels like she can think again and his thrusts have ceased to the most minute twitches of his hips, then shimmies enough that he slips out of her. 

They seem to be thinking the same thing, because he lifts himself off of her just enough for her to flip over and face him again, then lowers himself back down, his torso between her legs. He lays his head between her breasts and they just breathe for a long time. Rey imagines that he, like she, is busy processing the awe of what just happened, of trying to focus around the slightest spinning of her brain and commit to memory the stratospheric way they made each other feel.

"Can I stay?" He says, still a little breathless, and Rey's whispering a yes before she's even taken a second to consider it. All she knows is that he's warm and vital and firm all over, and after months alone in her bed, in that shared room in Boston, to be in a private space with both their nakedness, and the sweat of their ardor still drying...this is a feeling she wants to hold on to.

At some point they shift under the blankets, and Rey glances out the window to see big, fat lazy flakes of snow drifting slowly down past the narrow window. She stares at the way they flutter, occasionally sticking to the glass, but it's Ben's fingers against her jaw that redirect her attention. His touch is so gentle, seemingly impossible from fingers so long and large, but they just barely skim to her chin then down against her throat. He says nothing.

"What?" She whispers finally.

"Nothing," he answers honestly, and she expects some follow-up, but none ever comes. It's just like when he speaks to her with that edge of command in his tone. There's the slightest edge of demand in the feel of his fingertips, compelling her to look at him. 

She revels at being wanted, so wanted as to inspire urgency and even impatience in the man who started this night so differently. When she first saw him in that bistro he was so cool and aloof, making small talk with Poe and his other coworkers, but ultimately not seeming the least bit bothered if he wasn't speaking to anyone. He had this languid way of leaning against the bar, this careless way of running his hand through his hair.

Rey'd made that man frantic with lust.

That power feels good.

What feels even better is when he slings one heavy arm across her torso, pinning her on her back where she lays, and she glances over to see his eyes dropping shut. 

She sighs, closing her own eyes too, hyper-aware of every last square inch of her body. 

She still feels like her skin is buzzing, until the very second she falls asleep.

\-------

They take another town car to his house. The car is identical to the one from the other night, though Rey has to admit she was too drunk then, to recognize if this guy is one of the same two drivers from before. She smiles brightly either way, settling into her seat while Kylo puts her bags in the back, then slides in next to her. "We're all good, sir." He says to the driver, and they pull away.

"Seatbelts!" Rey chirps, and clicks her own into place. She's staring out the window, but she fails to hear a click from the other side of the seat, so she looks over. "Kylo? Your seatbelt?"

He's looking at her with a furrowed brow that appears half-annoyed and half-fond, but either way, his hands are still. 

"Let me get this straight." She begins.

"Mhmm?"

"You seriously mean to tell me you're sheltering me for two weeks to protect us from coronavirus, but you won't wear a seatbelt that would protect you from serious bodily injury?"

He keeps looking at her for a moment. She almost wants to squirm under his scrutiny. He starts to grin. "I never said I was quarantining with you to protect us from the outside. I'm doing it to protect the outside from us."

She wants to fire off some quippy retort, but, well, _he's right._ They've both been exposed. They are the potential danger here.

"Nonetheless," she crosses her arms, "I could have just as easily isolated at Poe's. But you insisted, because you were worried about my nutrition, and if I had a place to be outside, and if I had enough space." His grin fades from something gleeful into something conciliatory. "You don't just want everyone else to be safe from me, do you? You want me to be safe."

A strange expression almost like fear flashes across his eyes, but it disappears as just as fast, and he nods. 

"I just want you to be safe too, Kylo." With a sigh, he reaches back and pulls his seat belt across his body, and with the resonating click, Rey breathes out a sigh of relief. 

"Thank you," she murmurs, then turns to stare out the window again. Even once she can't see him, she swears she can feel his gaze pinned on her. 

The streets are slightly more empty than they should be for a Sunday morning, a clear indication to her that she and Kylo aren't the only ones who got the memo.

Just as the car turns onto the first block of Hamilton Heights, Poe calls her.

"Rey!" He cries breathlessly as soon as she answers. "I just saw your text, holy shit. Someone on your train exposed you? What are they doing with them?"

"Po-"

"Did the train get diverted? Do you have to get tested? I thought you would be in Providence."

"No, I-"

But I just checked Find Friends and it says you're back here. But you're not at the train station?"

"I don-"

"Of course you can stay in my spare room, Rey. I think you should probably take an Uber to avoid exposing other people on the subway. Especially if you're in," she hears some rustling, "Harlem? Jesus Rey, that's a long trip out here. Anyways, I-"

Her fruitless attempts to interrupt Poe are ended when Kylo reaches out, snatches the phone from her hand, and mutters _fucking hell,_ as he raises it to his ear.

"Dameron?" He says almost menacingly, nostrils flaring.

Rey internally decides to call it his "perturbed dragon" face.

Rey hears the distant, tinny voice of Poe ask, incredulous, _"Ren?"_

"Yes, this is Kylo," he mutters impatiently, shifting to tug on the leg of his slacks. "Look, Rey won't be needing to stay in your spare room."

"Um, what? How did she even get back to the city?"

Kylo pointedly fails to mention the helicopter, exactly. "I offered for someone to go and get her from where her train had been stopped."

"More like insisted," Rey mumbles to him, and he shoots her a warning look that's laced with more playfulness than actual threat, and it makes her grin. He tries to stifle his smile in response.

"Is she staying in a hotel? I don't think that's gonna work, I heard most of them are likely to be closed soon. And anyways, to be honest she can't affo-"

"She's not staying in a hotel, Dameron."

"Well then what the hell is her plan?" Poe cries.

Kylo emits a long-suffering dramatic sigh, but Rey sees the nervousness in his face as she says it. "She's staying with me." There's silence on the other end of the line. Before Poe can launch into another one of his tirades, he adds, "I was at a meeting at the Italian consulate last week. One of their liasons just tested positive, and when I spoke to Phasma, she said since I'm not showing any symptoms, only those with whom I've had close contact need to be isolated."

There's another long pause. When Poe finally speaks, it's only to drawl, " _Close contact_ , eh?"

"Dameron, please," Kylo rebuffs, and Rey watches in delight as he begins to blush. He's so pale that the red on his cheekbones looks almost lurid. 

"I'd say you guys got pretty uh, _close_."

"Poe-"

"Might have even held hands, if memory serves."

"Yes, well," he clears his throat, "The point is, besides the person on the train, I also exposed her. And because of that, I felt obligated to assist with her mandatory isolation. I have plenty of space, you know that."

"Let's just hope that the _contact_ with you didn't expose her to anything else." Poe continues to joke, and it's Rey's turn to flush scarlet, fidgeting with the fringe on her scarf in a bid not to meet Kylo's eye.

"It most certainly did not. Cleaner than the kitchen floor, I am." Kylo states awkwardly.

Rey sees the minute he closes his eyes and cringes at his own stupidity. She mashes her lips together to stifle a laugh.

"Yeah, maybe _your_ kitchen floor. Certainly wouldn't trust whatever's living on mine."

"Yes, exactly my point as to why Rey won't be quarantining there." 

"Well, enjoy your two weeks of forced solitude with someone you barely know," Poe says breezily, and Rey can practically see him leaning back in his chair, smug expression on his face. It makes her want to pinch him. "Worse comes to worse, you can always get drunk again. You seemed to like each other a lot, then."

"Thank you for that sage advice." Kylo glances over at her, and she rolls her eyes.

"Call me if you need anything. Or if you get too close to murdering each other. I happen to like you both quite a lot."

"Of course."

"But I like her more."

"Once all of this is over, let's see if you'll admit that to my face." Some of the mirth has returned to Kylo's voice.

"Roger that."

"Bye, Dameron." He holds her phone back out to her. 

"We should probably disinfect that," she doesn't take it from him, "they say cell phones are worse than doorknobs."

He drops it onto the seat between them and stares at her, amused. "You couldn't have told me that before I pressed it against my face?"

"How was I to know you were going to commandeer my phone call?" 

"He would have spluttered and ranted all day if someone didn't take control of that conversation." Kylo says, splaying his fingers over his eyes.

"He's always had a flair for theatrics."

"Yet another reason I didn't want you staying there," he admits earnestly. "If anything bad did happen, you need someone who thinks carefully, logic first, and knows when to question their own psyche."

"You're good at questioning your own psyche?" She repeats.

"Oh I second guess myself all the time," he says, with a smiling huff, "that's exactly the type of person you want in a deadly global pandemic, right?"

Rey grins back, then shrugs, "Not sure. But regardless, it's who I got."

They're quiet for the rest of the ride, and Rey thinks back, on the number of times she's smiled since she climbed out of that helicopter. For the first time she considers that this experience might not be so bad.

\-------

She woke at two in the morning to feel him grinding against her thigh, his face pressed against her neck and half buried in her hair, she feels that same rush of power. Having reduced him to a needy, thrusting mess. 

"I'm sorry I woke you." He says, but the desperation in his voice doesn't ring with remorse in the least. "I couldn't wait. I saw you there and your body in the light and...." He trails off, lifts his head to look at her, and she's panting, her body catching up to his own level of arousal in a matter of moments, "and I wanted you again."

"It's okay" she breathes into his mouth as he initiates a kiss, feeling the length and the hardness of him and imagining it inside her again. She reaches for his hand and draws it up to her breast, then begins tracing circles against the small of his back, right where the two dimples curve in. 

It builds, the kisses deepen and the touches grow more urgent, from gentle caresses to gripping and pushing. He's pressing himself between her legs, just to feel the heat and the wetness on the outside. Rey thinks for a moment, that he seems to like driving himself crazy, denying himself a little. 

She takes a breath to ask him to be inside her, but before she can he pulls away, reeling back, eyes wild.

"What?" She manages to gasp out, while still grinding her hips against him, chasing another jolt of pleasure. 

"I don't have another condom," he says, even his whisper sounding dejected, and she stops her feverish rutting just long enough to notice the disappointment in his face, before he suddenly slides under the covers, his massive form shifting the blankets as he moves down, down...til his head is where his pelvis used to be.

Rey gasps harshly as his tongue meets her core. Her slick flesh and throbbing clit practically sing in response to his ministrations, mixing broad, flat licks with the targeted touch of his pointed tongue, given in such a random pattern that it feels utterly unpredictable what's coming next.

She reaches into his hair, fingers weaving tightly, and presses him closer, urges him to lick harder, faster, and he reacts instantly to her every command, even as her voice grows more terse and insistent. 

He must know the change in her tone is because it's working. Her body is climbing, higher and higher, and he refuses to let up until she's approached the peak and crashed right down over it, sighing and shaking and trying desperately to contain what she's feeling, but she's powerless to stop the way she's taken over by it. By him.

Her grip is still weak when she reaches to grab him up by the armpits, but he seems to get the message, dragging himself 'til they're at eye level again, and he's about to ask her something but she cuts him off with a kiss.

When she reaches for his dick and wraps one still shaky hand around it, he groans into her mouth, in frustration or relief she isn't sure. 

A moment later, sucking on his neck while thumbing the head with each stroke of her hand, he comes, shouting hoarsely into the pillow beneath her, his body locking up the same way it did the first time. This time, though, she's sober enough to properly admire it: the curve of his bicep, the wave and texture of his hair, the amount of space his chest travels each time it expands and contracts with a heaving breath. 

Rey thought she knew utter satisfaction when they were falling asleep after the first time. But now her eyes are sharp and her mind clear of the haze brought on by alcohol. Now it's just pure him and pure her in this bed. 

"I want to sleep close to you," she admits, and she can no longer blame her honesty on the liquor. _She just wants to tell him the truth._

He settles on his back and nudges her closer, pulling her bent leg across his torso. She lays her head right onto the mattress next to his chest, inches from his armpit.

"How's it smell around there?" He jokes with a hiccup of laughter, but still sounds a little nervous.

"Like Old Spice and government bureaucracy."

"You're right, I sweat protocol." She snorts, then before she can question it, leans a fraction forward to press a kiss to his side. 

"What's the protocol for the morning after the best one night stand of your life?"

"Hmm." He muses, rolling onto his side and lining them up, so her head rests just below his chin. "You put on some half-assed outfit that still makes you look amazing. I reluctantly put on my rumpled suit."

She huffs, uncomfortable with being complimented, "Okay..."

"Then we pick up breakfast sandwiches and coffee on the street, we go to McGolrick Park and eat. I try harder to make you laugh because we're not drunk anymore, and everyone's a tougher audience when they're sober." 

At that, she laughs. 

"We make out, in a way that's entirely indecent for a Saturday morning park bench. We take turns shoving away only to keep kissing a moment later." She sighs, remembering the way his lips feel. "And then you walk me to the subway."

She blinks her eyes open, picturing that moment. The moment when the magic spell shatters, when they're no longer two people who briefly, intensely created their own universe between them. "And we both keep living our lives," he rumbles, and tightens his grip on her hip.

She doesn't look at him. She doesn't need to. Instead she leans that same fraction forward, kissing him on his left pectoral this time, and mutters, "Let's not think about that part."

"For now just sleep close to me, all right Rey?"

"All right, Kylo."

\-------

"All right." She says nervously, as they pull up and he points out the window past her face. "You weren't kidding about the _I own a brownstone_ thing."

He blinks at her. "Why would I be kidding?"

"No, that's my point, you just-" she waves her hand vaguely, then gives up trying to make a point, "here it is!"

"Here it is," he repeats, and exits to get her bags, after handing an unidentifiable dollar amount, folded into a tiny rectangle, to the driver.

It's brown and it's made of stone, so she supposes it lives up to the name. It looks a lot like some of the places she's seen in Back Bay, walk-ups that are either split into three apartments or else one large family home. It's got a heavily carved archway and a _turret, holy shit,_ rounding out the front of the house and producing a bay window on each floor.

There, in the corner where the arch and the turret meet, is an honest to god gargoyle.

"Is that a gargoyle?" Rey inquires needlessly, as they approach the door.

Ben glances up as though she were asking about an ordinary garden fence post, or perhaps a doormat. "Oh. Yeah, that's Sheev. Don't ask me how he got his name. My grandma picked it, and she's passed away, so no one can remember the reason why."

"Spooky." Rey's about to add some comment on about how he seems like the kind of guy to have a gargoyle, but she's too busy gaping at the gleaming dark wood hallway that greets her on the other side of the door.

She follows him in on careful feet and follows his lead to immediately take her shoes off. There's a rack in an alcove and she finds a free spot, nestling her sneakers there. 

The furniture is all relatively modern, save for a tufted white velvet couch that looks straight out of Mae West's old dressing room or something. What kind of person buys a white couch? And manages to keep it that clean?

"Should I give you a tour?" He asks, hanging up his suit jacket and unbuttoning another shirt button, as though the sight of the freckles just below his throat. were publicly indecent. Nonetheless, Rey _feels_ a little indecent as she stares at the patch of bare skin.

She nods, and leaves her bags in the entryway. 

Beyond the living room with the ridiculous couch there are a set of pocket doors, rolled half open to reveal a dining room with a long mahogany table, simple and elegant. Behind there is the kitchen, clearly redone in the seventies, with avocado green tile and matching linoleum floors. Ben tells her he found the matching green Formica table at a nearby diner that was shutting down.

On the second floor, he breezes past a closed door and simply mutters, "My room," then leads her to the next doorway, which is a real and actual library. Walls of books frame a huge brick fireplace, which is flanked by two leather wing-back chairs and matching ottomans. 

"Do you have one of those rolly ladders?" She asks excitedly, and he gestures behind the door. Rey gasps at the sight of the spherical brass wheels and the rail where it's bolstered to the shelves. 

"What self-respecting library owner wouldn't?" They spend a moment grinning at each other, then bustle back into the hallway.

"So there are three guest rooms, and you can really take your pick," he explains, leaning back against the banister, looking so at ease in this space that makes Rey feel like a bull in a china shop.

Well maybe not a bull, but like, the cheapest, crappiest styrofoam cup with bite marks and a lipstick smudge on it...in a china shop.

He's still talking. "There's one on this floor with an en-suite bathroom, and then two more on the third floor that share a bathroom between them."

"What, no fully separate apartment in the basement for me?" She reaches out and pokes his leg with her socked foot, and he frowns his way into a reluctant grin.

"No, the basement is the home gym, so unless you wanna sleep on a yoga mat, I don't think that'll work out."

"I would prefer a bed, thank you." 

"I figured so."

"I think I'll take one of the rooms upstairs," she points overhead, "this is probably gonna be the only time in my life that I can say I had my own private floor somewhere."

He laughs, and nods, then turns and calls up as he's descending, "I'll bring your bags upstairs."

He disappears before she can protest that she'll do it herself, so instead she prances up the last flight to find two huge guest rooms, both of which have King size beds and fireplaces, and a bathroom with a clawfoot tub big enough to fit two of her. She'd wager that tub is about the size of Rose's Corolla. 

One room is lacy, done up in pink and yellow, like a Marie Antoinette fever dream, and the other is sleek and understated, all simple wood furniture with navy blue plaid wallpaper. Framed photos of old planes hang on a perfect diagonal across one wall. 

Rey waffles back and forth for a moment before choosing the former room, assuring herself that in her lifetime, she'll probably get to stay in a few hipster hotels that look like the airplane room, but she'll never again have the chance to wake up feeling like she's in a Versailles budoir. 

The bed has a _canopy_. Silk, if her guess is correct. She places her phone on the mantle of the _fireplace_ , and again, _holy shit,_ this is someone's house? He lives here by himself?

She hears Kylo stomping up the stairs. He's not even wearing shoes, but she bets he's incapable of moving quietly. 

When he appears in the doorway, she speaks. "Can I ask why such a stark contrast between the rooms?"

"When my parents first got married, they remodeled." He explains, and glances around, "They went through a rough patch and stopped sleeping in the same bed. So they each had a room done up how they wanted."

"Man, your dad's really into French lace, isn't he?" Rey quips, and it throws Kylo into an unexpectedly long fit of laughter. So long that Rey begins to giggle, just watching the way he leans into the door frame to try to catch his breath. 

"I'm sorry, if you knew my dad, you'd realize how ridiculous that is."

"What's he like?"

"I could best compare him to Ron Swanson," he offers, and Rey nods to show she understands the reference, "but with an even lower bullshit tolerance, and less well-kept facial hair. He's a real curmudgeon."

"So," she says, and smacks her thighs through her jeans, moving her bags to the window seat then sinking down next to them. 

"Let the quarantine begin?" Kylo announces uncertainty, fidgeting with the doorknob.

"Start your engines," she crosses her arms, "or rather, turn them off, because we aren't going anywhere!"

He smiles at her joke and gives her a final, over exaggerated nod, and she's not sure what it was meant to communicate, but she nods back anyway, and he mutters as he's closing the door, "I'll let you get settled."

He closes her door on his way out.

She picks up her phone and taps into the News app, and the levity of the past hour fades away. 

_Dozens of new COVID-19 hospital admissions across New York City_

_Widespread testing unlikely to be available for several weeks_

_Governor considering 'stay-at-home' order discouraging nonessential travel_

_Thousands of new deaths in Italy project grim future for U.S. outbreak_

Rey sinks onto the bed, stomach churning. She sends texts to every single person she's called or texted in the last six months, checking in if they're okay, if they are making plans to stay home. 

Kylo did a great job of distracting her, of making this feel like some silly adventure for a while. But at the end of the day, she's here because the world has grown significantly less safe. And the danger is posed by an enemy they don't even understand. 

She lays back on the lacy, fluffy comforter and wonders what the next two weeks will hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot written, so expect Chapter 3 tomorrow. Total chapter count is also going up to 5.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit gets real.
> 
> There are some brief, very existential mentions of death in this chapter, in case that's something that might upset you.

_The morning after went exactly as he said it would. Mostly._

They wake up late, Rey's got a text from Poe saying he's already left to meet some friends for brunch and they're welcome to anything in the fridge, which she knows won't be much.

Kylo snores a little bit. And sleeps on his back with one arm flung up, framing his head, armpit hair on full display. It so blatantly defies his subdued suvaness that she can't help but grin.

He gets twenty more minutes of rest before Rey's stomach growls so loudly it rouses him. She feels her cheeks flush. He squirms, twisting his limbs in haphazard stretches, then looks over at her. She presses a hand to her stomach. "Sorry."

He shakes his head langorously. "I promised you a breakfast sandwich last night. You had all night to dream about it."

She laughs, pointing her toes in a stretch of her own. "You think the food is what I dreamt about?"

He looks over at her, blinking. "What else would it be?"

"The sex." She says plainly, stretching again, this time to arch her body towards him.

He blushes, which Rey marvels at, then reaches a tentative hand towards her to pull the sheet gently down, gaze skittering over her belly and breasts and collarbones. "It was that good for you too, huh?" 

She nods silently, biting her lower lip, and wonders if this is where it starts all over again.

But then her stomach makes its empty presence known once more, and he leans over to kiss just above her belly button, smirking. "Patience, it's coming." He hauls himself out of bed and offers her a hand, and Rey tries not to notice how he lifts her entire weight with one arm, barely exerting himself.

He gets dressed while she rinses off lightning fast. When she emerges into the living room, Kylo is sitting on the couch staring into space.

His suit is a little creased, but covered by that god-given gray wool coat, he looks as good as he did last night. When she gently says his name, he simply mutters, "I need coffee."

She wonders if he's spent a lot of time in Greenpoint, because he navigates them effortlessly to a tiny walk-up shop, doesn't even have to look at the street signs. The ancient woman in the window listens to his order then pats his hand as she takes his money, and he calls out, "Thanks, Maz."

"You come here a lot?" She asks, tilting her face into the wintry sunshine.

"Back before, when things were different with my parents, I lived in Brooklyn. Poe and I took the subway to work together every day. But I've been coming here since college."

"Where'd you go?"

"NYU."

"Quite the city boy." 

He nods. "I've never lived somewhere smaller than several million people." 

"Wow."

"You?"

"Um," she says, and her eyes flutter open, face angling away from the sun to avoid the burn to her retinas. "I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Really rural town in northern England. But when I was eighteen I left for Boston, for school, and I love it. I want to live in big cities for the rest of my life."

"I dunno," he says, leaning next to her, "Sometimes I wonder about the quaintness and the charm of small towns. Was that part nice?"

She swallows. "I think what you're picturing is a myth. 99% of small towns aren't Stars Hollow, Connecticut."

"Wow. Gilmore Girls reference. Is that show popular in northern England?"

"Hey, I'm an American girl now. Got my green card and everything. All cultural references can now be considered natural to my identity as such."

"Okay, I'll allow that. Besides, the American references are the only ones I understand, so keep them coming."

She laughs as he collects their coffee and food from the window. "You work for the foriegn service, Kylo. You seem incredibly smart. So I'm betting you have at least a rudimentary understanding of some other cultures."

They stop at a crosswalk. "Nope, total Phillistine."

"See okay," she laughs, "Biblical references? Definitely not gonna get those."

"Except for that one?"

"Yep."

"You're not religious?"

"Definitely not. You?"

"No, my parents are very _decide for yourself_ types, but neither of them are spiritual either, so I was already predisposed, I think."

"How do you feel about organized religion in general?" She asks, hopping up onto the curb as they surmount another block.

"Isn't this one of the topics that's taboo on a first date?"

She stops walking, wondering if the mix of hope and uncertainty is showing in her eyes, and says "Is this a first date?"

He slowly sets their food on a window ledge, hands suddenly nervous. He takes his coffee and cracks open the thin plastic lid to take a sip. "I uh, I had kinda thought it might be."

"When would the second one be?" She posits brazenly. 

"The next time you're in New York. Or if I'm in Boston. There are a few consulates there, with whom I work occasionally."

"That could be months from now." She says, confused by his logic. _Two dates divided by a dozen weeks couldn't lead to anything, could it?_

"Well yeah, maybe." His shoulders shrug in his coat.

"Like the kind of date where we just get dinner and then sleep together again? And then forget about each other until the other person happens to be in their city?"

"I-" he begins, then closes his mouth, fingers tracing the circumference of his cup over and over. "I think you're reading too much into what I meant." 

"Okay. What did you mean?"

"I like you. I had a nice time last night. Unless you're an Oscar-worthy actress, I think you did too. And all I mean is that if I got the chance to see you again, dinner or not, sex or not, I would want to."

She takes a breath, relaxes the defensive stiffness in her posture, and nods. "Yeah. I would want that too."

"Okay," he says simply, chin tilted down and eyes tilted up to keep his gaze on her. "Let's go to the park and eat now, yeah?"

"Yeah."

\-------

"Yeah?" Rey mutters, to the knock on the guest bedroom door. _Her_ door, for the next two weeks at least.

"Uh, dinner's ready."

"You can open it," she turns away from the desk.

He does, looking up with annoyance at the creaking hinges, and then repeats himself. "Dinner's on the table."

"You cooked?"

"Yeah."

"You cook a lot?"

"Approximately as often as I eat yes."

"I'm gonna have to find a way to repay you for some of this."

"What can you make?"

"I make crazy-good chocolate chip cookies."

"Great. I'll eat six and then have to spend two hours on the treadmill." He jokes, and she rolls her eyes.

"I also make truly excellent chicken pot pie." 

"Ooh. Now that I can get behind." 

"Just assign me a night and the pot pie shall be yours." 

"Cool." He remains in her door, perhaps a meter away from her. "Ready to eat?"

"Are you comfortable with me breaking the six-foot distancing rule?"

He puts his hands on his hips. "The way I see it, our exposure to the virus has been about equal. We're both young, and seemingly healthy. Neither of us is exposing ourselves to anyone else. S o if our chance of getting sick, and the degree to which we would get sick, are about the same, then there's no problem with breaking the six-feet rule."

"Does your virologist friend concur with this logic?"

"I did not consult Phasma on this one." 

She rise and follows him down the stairs. Halfway there, she asks, "So what's on the menu tonight?"

"Spaghetti bolognese and broccoli rabe."

"Sounds good. I'm friends with all types of pasta."

That dark wood dining room table is set up with two plates, one at the head and one just to its right, so Rey takes the chair to the right and watches Kylo disappear into the kitchen. "Wine?" He yells through the doorway.

"Sure! Are you positive you want to crack into the alcohol this early?"

He reappears, bottle and two glasses in hand. "It's eight o'clock at night, Rey."

"No, no, I mean this early in the quarantine. If there comes a time when we really can't leave, we may want to ration the alcohol, save it for when we're truly going stir crazy."

As he fills her glass, he shakes his head. "That won't be necessary."

"Why not?"

"Because I have eighty four other bottles in a temperature controlled cabinet in the basement."

She gapes at him for a moment. "Oh."

"Uh-huh. You like this one?"

She takes a tentative sip. It's positively lush, like blackberries from the height of summer, and dark chocolate, and if velvet had a flavor, this would be it.

"Yeah, it's fine." 

The food is incredible. The rabe is blistered and charred to perfection, garlicky and lemony and the perfect contrast to the rich meaty pasta sauce. 

They talk. It's as easy and fun as it was when they were drunk, but...this time, they're not. 

Rey goes to bed with a stomach and a heart more full than either have been in a long time. She wonders if the next two weeks might actually be...fun. 

\-------

_They stand next to the railing at the entrance to the subway._

Rey reaches up and swipes a crumb from the corner of his mouth. He got his sandwich on challah. 

"Have a good trip back to Boston," he says softly, and adjusts his messenger bag on his shoulder. 

"Thanks. I'll let you know, if I'm ever planning to be in the city."

He nods, and she wonders for a brief moment if they might kiss. They didn't have that overzealous makeout session in the park like he said they would, just a couple of brief kisses after she saw the way his face lit up when a dog wandered over to say hello to them.

She's already wishing for another taste of his lips. She wonders if he's thinking the same thing, eyeing the gaze he levels at her, but instead they both smile one last time and he turns away. She watches his dark hair through the slats of the railing until he disappears belowground.

She occupies herself by navigating back to Poe's without looking up any directions. 

\-------

The first morning she wakes up in Kylo's brownstone, Rey develops a suspicion that a lot of her days are about to look the same. Today is a Monday, but what will differentiate it from tomorrow or the next, she really isn't sure.

She grabs the notebook she normally uses to track her budget and flips to the last third, folding the topmost page in half to mark her place.

On the next sheet, she writes in her small neat script: Day 1.

\-------

On Day 2, Kylo makes them egg salad sandwiches for lunch and he asks her if she wants to work on a puzzle.

She ends up neglecting the entire afternoon of work, as does he, so they can finish it in one sitting. It's a technicolor nightmare of a hummingbird dipping its beak into a hibiscus flower. "My uncle got it for me for Christmas one year," he mentions, as though his own reputation for puzzle preferences needs defending. 

Rey comes back to her desk to find two unread Slack messages from Holdo sent four hours ago, regarding her current work project.

She feels a twinge of regret, but then remembers Kylo's face as he stood up and angrily bellowed, "Why doesn't that piece fit there???" while she howled in laughter, and she thinks she made the right choice to stay at the table with him.

On Day 5, she's in the basement with his permission, digging around for the ten pound weights he swears are in one of the storage boxes in the corner. Thirty-five pound dumbbells are the lightest ones he currently has out, which she drolly explains are perhaps a little heavy for her.

She doesn't find the weights.

She does find his old Wii from college, and a dusty copy of Just Dance 2 that's still in its shrink-wrapped plastic. 

_Why is it still in the plastic,_ she asks.

"Do I seem like the type of guy who would've wanted to play Just Dance?"

"Just because you're clearly an anal-retentive nightmare hyperfocused on his career, with an alarmingly clean home and a disturbing need for control and routine doesn't mean you don't like to let loose sometimes." 

"That's exactly what it means, Rey." But he's fighting a tiny smile.

She writhes to "It's Raining Men" more and more aggressively until she's barely scoring any points, she's flailing so much. But she stops caring if she's winning, because he's doubled over on the couch, laughing so hard he's gone silent. 

She doesn't miss the way his laughter fades and his gaze grows heated.

But neither of them do anything about it.

\-------

On Day 6, they watch Pride and Prejudice when his internet goes out. It's one of the only movies he has on DVD, something his mom left behind when his parents moved out, and while Rey might be easy to entertain, it wasn't hard to choose this over some stupid Michael Bay action movie his dad had forgotten here too. 

For most of the film, Rey's occupied eating her fig, arugula and goat cheese flatbread and drinking her glass of pinot grigio. But when she's finished, focused solely on the film with the wine buzzing in the back of her head, the sight of Bingley on his knee before Jane hits her right in the chest.

She tries to raise her hand slowly to swipe at her eyes, but as always Kylo's so _aware_. "Oh no, Rey, this wasn't meant to make you sad."

"No, no," she insists, wiping at her face harder now that there's no hiding it, "these are happy tears. It's just..." she trails off, but then he lifts a long arm and lays it across her shoulders, rubbing a gentle circle into her upper arm, and a spike of anxious excitement pushes more words out of her, "they both suffered so much because of the mistakes and the selfishness of other people, but it all worked out in the end."

"Sometimes people who love us let their own ideas get in the way of what's best for us," he says, with so much gravity in his voice that she suspects they aren't just talking about the movie anymore.

"Yeah," she says simply, and knuckles one last tear off her face.

"Even if they are happy tears, I don't like seeing you cry," he mutters, embittered, running a hand through his hair. 

She smiles softly, turning to look fully at him. She's surprised for a second, how close his face is, but teases, "Once you get the internet back, we'll only choose totally emotionless movies, that way you don't have to wo-"

His lips are on hers before she even registers that he'd moved. The kiss is hard, perhaps harder than he intended, because he pulls back a tiny fraction to make it more gentle, sucking firmly to pull her lips into his mouth, and Rey knows this is ill-advised, whether the disease is spread through droplets or aerosol doesn't matter anymore, now that they are once again committing what Kylo so aptly called _close contact._

Rey finds that she doesn't care. She can't care, not when his mouth is so hot and his huge hands are gripping her torso through her sweatshirt. Not when she scrambles on top and pushes him over until he's laying fully on the cushions, palming the back of her head to keep her face close as their tongues intertwine.

The chaste final embrace between Darcy and Elizabeth on the front steps of Pemberley stands in sharp contrast to the way Rey and Kylo are horizontal and tangled together, his hips thrusting against her and his hand plucking at her nipple through the fabric. 

She wants to rip his clothes off, to prove to herself that the memory she has of his body is real, that she isn't imagining the way he made her feel last time. She wants his hands to keep gripping her hard, the sharpest indication of his lust, and she wants him to exert the tiniest measure of control the same way he did before. 

But this isn't like last time, where if intentions were misunderstood or they weren't on the same page, she could walk away the next morning. She lives here right now, and the last thing she would want is to ask for something he doesn't want to give, then have to face him tomorrow. 

They make out through the entirety of the credits, but when an ambulance siren wails nearby, it's like they are both brought back to reality. 

The reality of the world outside, and what's happening. It's sobering, and makes them shy, and they both pull away, avoiding each other's gazes.

He doesn't let her go though. Despite little nudges from her body to stand up, he rumbles, "No," and keeps her there, head tucked under his chin, and after a moment she melts into his hold.

After the siren has faded completely and the air is silent again, she rises, taking their plates and glasses to the kitchen.

When she heads for the stairs he's there, the blue screen at the end of the DVD washing his face in strange light, staring at her.

"Goodnight, Kylo."

\-------

On Day 7 they finally watch the news. They hear of the overwhelmed hospitals, the strain on supplies, the desperate need for ventilators. They turn coverage on again at 10, and hear the death toll for that day.

Rey thinks of Kaydel, wearing a mask and a face shield, fighting to help save someone's life. She thinks of all the homeless kids like her, here and back in England, unable to self isolate because the shelters have sixteen beds per room. 

Suddenly the TV clicks off and the remote hits the floor with a heavy thud.

"Goddamn it!" Kylo hisses, and stands up to pace back and forth across the room. 

Rey's crying again. They aren't happy tears this time. "This is gonna be really bad, Kylo."

He hears the sob in her voice and freezes, looking at her, chest heaving. Some of the fearful anger drains from his face and he approaches the couch, pulling her into his arms, "Yes baby, it is gonna be really bad," he whispers, sounding sad in a way she's never heard from him, and it only makes her cry harder.

This time when they kiss, it isn't frantic and hot. It's soft, and gentle, her tears sliding from her eyes and spreading across both their faces where they touch. He keeps kissing her, on her neck and cheeks and forehead too, until her eyes finally dry and her breathing evens out.

He carries her to her room and lays one last kiss over her hair before he leaves. She wants to grab his hand as he turns away, ask him to crawl in with her here or for permission to follow him to his bed. Just to be held. Just for the reassurance.

But again, she doesn't want to force him into anything he doesn't want. So she watches him leave, and curls tighter into herself once the door is shut.

\-------

Day 8, at breakfast: she kisses him just once, gently and domestically, as she pulls the Raisin Bran from the cupboard. They continue on with the little brushes of affection throughout the day. His hand on her foot, straightening the toe of her sock. Her fingers on his jaw, tracing where his beard stops and the smooth skin of his cheek begins. Both of them are fearful, and helpless to resolve that fear, mostly. But this stuff helps a little.

Rey listens from the second floor landing later, as Kylo makes a call.

"Yeah, liquidate half of whatever's in the DELT fund. I know it's that much, I want the full half, please. Transfer it into my checking." There's a long pause. "You can't just put charitable contribution? You need the name of each place?" Another pause. "Okay, uh. Well my plan is to split it up. No Kid Hungry, the rental assitance office of Coalition for the Homeless, and Mount Sinai. Yes, they just sent out a request for donations due to the equipment shortage. Thank you. Would you mind giving me the exact amount? I want to start filling out the paperwork now."

Rey leans against the wall, letting the cool plaster touch her cheek, and closes her eyes. She stays there, recounting every "I'm doing okay," response she's gotten to her text messages lately. Poe, Finn and Rose. Kaydel and all their housemates. The call Kylo placed to the old woman from the breakfast cafe in Brooklyn, Maz.

They're all okay.

She waits until she can't hear Kylo typing on his laptop anymore, then descends the stairs. She rarely comes down here in the middle of the day, so it's a surprise to see his files from work spread across the dining room table, a tiny island of space reserved for his computer and a glass of water. He looks away from where he appeared to be staring out the window when she enters. 

"Hey," he says softly, body slack, face drawn. She crosses the room and sits in his lap, pressing her forehead to his for a moment.

Rey wonders if things are changing, replaying how readily he is accepting this from her, not a trace of surprise in his gaze as she approached him. She lays one long, gentle kiss on his cheek, then mutters that she has to get back to work, and leaves the room.

Suddenly, in this strange new reality, money is power in a way it never was before. 

The fact that he's trying to share his power helps her sleep a little better that night.

\-------

On Day 9, Kylo hands her the requisite cup of coffee with hazelnut creamer, and she takes a relieved sip.

Time seems to stop. Kylo doesn't look up from the Wired magazine he's reading in his seat to her left. She swallows, takes another, tiny sip. Rolls the liquid around in her mouth. Her heart begins to pound. Then she gets up, taking her egg on toast with a thick layer of harissa paste, and retreats towards the staircase.

"Rey?" he asks, and just as she climbs the first step, she takes a bite and chews, slowly. "What are you-"

Her footsteps up to the second floor accelerate. She feels herself begin to sweat, a prickle of panic on the back of her neck.

"Don't follow me." She orders, and she hears him freeze at the bottom of the staircase. She turns just enough to see his silhouette, blurry, in her peripheral vision.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't taste it, Kylo." She can feel his alarm, even in the silence. "The coffee or the food. I can't taste fucking harissa paste." 

She finally hazards a look down at him, and his eyes look huge. Scared. He takes a hitching breath, then shifts on his feet. She watches his face transform, hardening with some sort of resolve. He reaches towards the hooks on the wall next to him, and into the pocket of that gray wool coat. He pulls out a pair of blue nitrile gloves, and snaps them on. 

"Go up to your room. There's Lysol wipes in the bathroom. Clean the doorknobs and the banister of the upper stairwell and on the third floor landing." His voice flickers between distressed and detatched. "Finish that food and leave your plate there on the stairs. I'm bringing you soup, ginger tea, a mask, and a thermometer. You just did your laundry, right?" 

"Yeah."

"Okay, so you have plenty of clean clothes."

"Yeah."

"Good." He goes to turn away, but at the last second turns back. His chest expands with a huge, deep breath. "Rey?"

"Yeah?" Her voice is small.

"You're gonna be okay." He says, and with the faraway look in his eyes, she suspects he's reassuring himself as much as he is her. "You're fucking gonna be okay, no matter what we have to do."

"Okay, Kylo."

"Okay."

He comes upstairs and hour later and slides two amsks under the gap where the door doesn't quite meet the floor. She takes one out of its plastic packaging and slips it on, then opens the door to retrieve the thermometer. He stands five yards away, on the stairs, watching. He waits there while she places the thermometer probe under her tongue, around the mask. "One hundred point three," she says, and looks up to see him sigh. She pulls the mask back over her mouth and blinks at him, unsure of what to say or do.

Telling him the soup smells good feels stupid. Saying thank you feels insignificant. 

"I'm sorry," is what she finally settles on.

"What?" He says, brow knitting.

"I'm sorry I...brought this into your home. I don't think either of us really seriously considered the possibility that we might get sick, and now I am, and you just have to deal with me? It's so unfair. I don't even really live here."

"I did." He says simply, and in reponse to the furrowing of her own brow, explains, "I did seriously consider that you might get sick. And there is no other place I would rather want you to be right now, baby."

There he is with that endearment again. She's not sure what she's done to deserve it, but she senses that he needs to say it as much as she needs to hear it. It makes her feel safe. She wonders if it makes him feel like he's protecting her.

"Eat, rest. Get some work done, whatever might take your mind off things." 

She nods, lifting the bowl and mug from the floor and closing it with her foot from the inside, careful not to touch any surface with which he might come into contact. 

She looks around this ridiculous chintzy room, and wonders for the tenth time since the start of this week, how the hell this can really be her life now. 

\-------

Days 10, and 11 go something like this:

Rey gets up. She takes her temperature, which reports a steady, low-grade fever. She drinks a huge glass of water, blows her nose for about two entire minutes, and then does her best to get some work done. She forces herself to focus on a work project at least until Kylo comes up with breakfast. She eats, then washes her own plates in the bathroom sink and wipes them out with diluted bleach, touching them only with a towel once they're clean, and places them outside her room again. Rinse and repeat, literally, for her other two meals. Sometimes they make small talk through the door while he's swapping out the plates. Once, he brings her a book from the library, a sumptuous leather-bound copy of Rebecca, which she reads that night until she falls asleep.

But for the most part, they leave each other alone. He lets her work, though she usually runs out of steam by just after lunch time and lays in bed, watching Netfix, sweating and coughing, until dinner. She presumes he gives up around the same time each day, because she swears she hears the faint strains of classical music coming from one floor below around 2 pm.

Despite the work, and Netflix, and the book, a slow, creeping malaise overtakes her. She feels lonely, crazed, desperate to run a mile and smile at a million strangers on the sidewalk and go to a bakery to buy an overpriced crossaint. She wants to hug Rose and give Finn a piggyback ride at the end of a summer community softball game. She wants a million impossible things, and without them, she feels bereft. Lost.

Day 10, that first night, she wakes. Her fever has spiked. She can only breathe through her mouth. Her muscles ache. Taking a cold shower does little to help, but the squeal in the pipes wakes him. He texts her.

_Showering now? You okay?_

She hesitates, damp thumbs held over the screen for a moment.

F _ever is raging. Do you think I could go outside? I am desperate for some cold air._

The three gray typing bubbles appear immediately.

_Yes. Wrap your face in something and bring a jacket or a blanket just in caes you need it. I'll go in the basement and wait while you walk out._

She makes her way to the ground floor after she hears him exit his room, scarf held over her mouth and nose, touching nothing. He's left the French doors to the small backyard open, so she slips out then uses her hip to nudge the doors closed.

She breathes a sigh of relief at the feeling of fresh, damp air on her skin. It must be 45 degrees, so she dutifully wraps herself in the huge pink fleece blanket she brought, but lets the air bathe her face and cool the sweat beading on her forehead and neck. 

A quiet knock startles her out of her reverie, and she turns to see him, inside the glass doors. He's wearing an untied black robe and striped boxer shorts, and Rey's eyes manage to dart away from the view of his body long enough to see what he's holding up.

Scrabble. He raises his eyebrows and she nods, a tiny smile flitting over her face.

He sets it down on the little table just inside the doors, and Rey settles into a patio chair, her legs feeling a little shaky. 

He turns the little wooden rack towards her, and picks out seven letters. She goes first. B-E-E-T. Not her strongest start ever.

Each turn, she calls her words out to him through the glass.

There, at four in the morning while the sickness courses its way through her, desperate to beat this infuriatingly smart man at a game she's only played a handful of times, Rey almost feels like herself again.

Despite her best efforts, he wins. She blames it on the sickness, tells him as much, and he rolls his lips into his mouth for a second. Rey's eyes watch how the blood rushes back in, pinkening his skin, when he opens his mouth to speak. It's muffled through the glass.

"Sure. Mhmm. We'll blame it on the sickness." His tone is dry, his eyes teasing.

She wants to slap him on the shoulder for his sass, wants to kiss him until he's lifted her by the hips and placed her atop that Scrabble table, wants him to do _something_ , anything more to take her mind away from this illness. 

But they can't do any of those things. So instead she flips him off, narrowing her eyes, and he does the same, then presses that long, thick middle finger against the window. She does it too, lining up their fingertips, then mutters through the glass, "Head back downstairs."

He stays in the basement until she's firmly shut back into her room. 

The next day, 11 according to her notebook, Kylo brings her lunch while her daily company conference call is happening. She hears him creaking up the stairs. That was the first time an acute wave of sadness really hit her. _Crushed_ her. She keeps the volume up on the call, then creeps in socked feet over to the doorway.

She listens to the sound of his breath on the other side. She counts the number of seconds he lingers there, wonders if he's trying to listen to the call, then relishes the slight tremble in the wood of the door when he rumbles, "Hey Rey, brought your lunch." 

She slides silently back a few feet, then croaks in her roughened voice, "Thank you!"

She listens to his steps fade away. The feelings hit her again. 

She spent so much time alone when she was young. 

_Why can't she tolerate it now? Why is she so desperate to connect, to feel?_

_To touch?_

For half a second, she allows the thought: maybe she loathes the idea of being alone because she's finally met someone who could show her what it would be like if she weren't. Someone funny and clever and charming. But at times serious too, in a way that makes her feel safe. Makes her feel like she can trust him. 

She hates that he's so great. She hates that he's taking such good care of her. She hates that Kylo has made her feel something so strong so quickly.

Tears prickle at her eyes, and she knows their true cause is not just her loneliness, but fear. 

Fear that she will get sicker. Fear that she will have to go to the hospital, and once she's there, she might already be weak enough that any passing bacterium will take up residence in her lungs. She won't even be able to put up a fight.

Fear that she might die before she ever gets to experience this life she fought so hard to make for herself. 

It's not unheard of: she's reading the articles, she knows people in their late twenties are dying. Not many, but some. Some have preexisting conditions, or were smokers, but some...weren't. Some were like her. Health conscious, took every precaution. She heaves on a sob, and it triggers a wicked coughing fit, which she struggles to control.

Rey's upbringing has made her pretty confident that there's no afterlife. And the thought that tomorrow, or in a few days, or in another week, she could just...cease to exist....

_No._

She cannot think that way. She rises from her messy bed, forcing back her fatalistic thoughts every few seconds, fighting to let her mind fixate on something, anything else.

She yanks her headphones from the desk and snatches up her phone. 

It isn't difficult for her to find the right song, the album is almost always lingering in her 'Recently Played.' 

She presses play on Alejandro and queues it on repeat. As the melancholy violin fades in and the beat begins, she pictures every twirl and dance move, focuses on imagining every detail exactly right. Ever so slowly, it calms her down.

She eats half her lunch an hour later, and can't be bothered to wash the dishes. She could barely taste it anyway. Her emotions exhausted her, so she takes a long nap through the afternoon, and she wakes to the fading gray light outside, and Kylo knocking again with her dinner. He doesn't ask after the other dishes, but waits a bit longer than normal for her to reply. Finally she offers a weak "thanks," and he must hear something in her tone.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah I just, you know. Feeling terrible. It comes and goes."

"Right," she hears the floorboards creak as he shifts on his feet, "Do you need anything else? Painkillers? Hot tea? Heating blanket? More books? I just want to-"

"No Kylo, I'm fine." 

"Okay." His voice bleeds uncertainty, but he leaves it at that, clearing his throat. His footsteps retreat to the staircase.

She falls into a half-sleep, a twilight slumber that lasts throughout the evening. She debates getting up to get her food...but she can't. If she's fully awake her thoughts consume her and her eyes mist over again, and right now, being sick is the absolute limit of what she can handle.

What finally rouses her is a triple knock on her door.

"Rey? Rey, why didn't you take your food?" His voice is sharp, his words deliberate.

She sits up, rubbing her hand across her warm forehead, and makes a wordless sound of frustration.

"Rey, answer me." 

"Not hungry. I didn't feel like it." She responds, burrowing deeper into the mattress.

His voice sounds closer, he must be leaning towards the door. "That's not a choice, Rey. I need you to eat."

She tries not to dwell on the timbre of his voice. She tries not to picture him hovering in the doorway, taking up most of the space. She tries not to let these thoughts spur another swell of desolation in her heart.

She tries, and she fails.

She spends a long moment staring up at the canopied ceiling, gathering herself back together and wondering which words will most easily placate him. Tears slip out. She doesn't want him to hear her like this.

"Okay, I'll come and get it in just a minute."

She's too distracted by trying to control her tears that she doesn't notice there are no footsteps walking away.

Several moments later, in a whisper, "Baby, please." She hears a small _thunk_ against the door, and wonders if it was his head leaning against it. "I'm not leaving til you come get your food. You have to eat to stay strong. It's your best chance at getting healthy." Another pause, and she hears him take a halting breath. "Please."

She rises from the creaking bed slowly, wiping her nose, trying not to sniffle despite the watery mucous streaming from it. "Back up to the stairs," she orders, and hears him retreat. 

She opens the door slowly. There he is, standing nervously on the landing, her first sight of him in two full days. Half his face is obscured by a blue surgical mask, but those dark eyes burn into her, even across the fifteen feet between them. "You have to eat, Rey." He says, with a rigidity in his tone and his posture. "I will not," he voice raises, "let this be any worse than it absolutely has to be for you. And to make sure of that, you must eat."

She nods, swipes at her nose again, and stares at those strong, capable hands. 

She hadn't realized how much they had been touching each other, during the first week. There was when they made out on the couch, sure. But also, their hands brushing when he offered her a glass of wine. Her, reaching out to poke his leg with her toe when he was so engrossed in his phone that he no longer paid attention to the conversation. Him pulling a piece of fuzz from her hair, letting his hand linger on the curve of her skull as he pulled away.

She didn't realize then. But now, especially with everything she's been thinking and feeling, she's starved for it.

"God I wish I could touch you," she moans, and tucks her chin to her chest to try and hide the welling tears.

"You will soon, baby. I promise." He says, potent frustration in his tone. "You have go get better first. So just do what I ask you, okay? Please?"

She nods, and bends down to lift her plate and her mug, filled with steaming tea, a lemon wedge bobbing inside it.

"Goodnight, Kylo."

"Night Rey."

It's a long time before she hears his footsteps tread down the stairs.

\-------

On Day 12, she wakes up at nearly eleven in the morning, feeling different. She reaches blindly for the thermometer on the bedside table and she feels her pajamas, which are nearly stiff with dried sweat. At the sound of the little beep, she pulls it from her tongue. 98.8

She takes a huge breath. Her sinuses are still congested and her body still feels a little sore, but the end of the fever means she's in the home stretch. She's on her way out of this. She's gonna be okay.

She really doesn't feel hungry again, but she remembers the insistence in Kylo's eyes last night, and she has to admit he's right, her body surely needs it. 

She trudges to the door and prays that whatever he made her, it isn't oatmeal.

When she opens her door, there's nothing there. The space beyond the threshold is empty. She freezes, listens to the house for a moment.

Silence.

She takes a sip of air. "Kylo?" She calls out, in the loudest voice she can without hurting her throat. She repeats it again, but gets no response.

"Kylo where are you?" She tries once more, and hears nothing.

Then, after a second, a quiet groan.

Her whole body tenses. A million scenarios enter her mind.

_He cut himself while cooking, and is bleeding profusely all over that green linoleum floor. He fell in the shower and hit his head. He had some sort of freak stroke and can't move or call for help._

She flees to her bathroom, scrubs her hands for a full minute in agonizingly hot water, then dons the second disposable mask he brought her days ago, yet to be used since she hasn't left her space.

It feels strange to exit the room, like she's forced to break through some invisible force field to enter the rest of the house, so she charges straight to the stairs and down the first flight.

She intended to go all the way to the ground floor, but as she's hurtling across the second floor landing, she notices something out of place.

That door is open. The one next to the library. Her mind flashes back to the tour he gave her. " _My room,_ " he'd said curtly.

She stops in her tracks, eyeing the door a moment longer, and still hears nothing, from this floor or below. Then, she charges right for that open door, shouldering it wider.

Kylo lays in bed, sheets pulled to his chin. He's shaking. 

_No._

She takes a step closer, and thinks she catches a glimpse of a damp sheen on his skin.

_No._

"Kylo?" 

He's sleeping deeply, or otherwise unconscious, and doesn't respond. His mouth is slack.

Her overwhelming instinct is to press her hand to his forehead. She almost does it, unthinkingly. She stops herself, at the last second, when her fingers are millimeters from his skin.

There's a thermometer on his bedside table, too. Rey wraps her hand in a page torn from a magazine, never making contact with the device, and standing as far away as she can, her face turned away from him, slides the probe into his mouth and underneath his tongue.

She hears that same quiet beep.

102.5 degrees.

_No._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not kidding when I say blasting Lady Gaga has helped me cope lately. Just a thought, if you might want to try it.


	4. Chapter 4

Rey's never been an especially good caregiver. When she was very young, looking after someone else just wasn't really a part of her life. 

As she got older and her life grew more... _normal_ , she supposes, she honed her skills somewhat.

She made Rose hot chocolate when she got a horrible ear infection and watched Finn put drops into her ears, massaging the skin just next to it, to help the medicine settle in.

She hunted through the townhouse to find Kaydel's slippers when she was bedridden with strep throat and freezing all the time. 

Back in college, she once drew Poe a cool bath then rubbed calamine lotion on his back, when he tripped down the side of a small bluff in the Blue Hills and landed right in a tangle of poison ivy. 

But for the most part, little effort and simple fixes were all that her friends demanded of her. They were never _that_ sick, so she never had to do _that_ much _._

_All of that changes now with Kylo._

He is _that_ sick. And they're in the middle of a pandemic, which has already infected Rey, though blessedly mildly. 

She scours the house and comes up with six masks, two of which are fabric and reusable, and four pairs of gloves, all found in his briefcase, so he must have gotten them from work. She reserves the disposable gloves for if they have to leave the house...she resolutely does not think about the reasons why they might need to. 

She wears the kitchen gloves she finds under the sink while she cares for him, sterilizing them as best she can by spraying them down with Lysol each night, letting it sit for five minutes, then scrubbing them in near-boiling water. 

She saves the masks too. Makes a few more reusable ones by tearing up some kitchen towels. She feeds him broth, which he is awake enough to swallow, and gives him Tylenol, which brings his temperature down to just below 101. A few times, she gleans from his garbled mumbling that he thinks the person taking care of him is his mom. She helps him to the bathroom, after admitting to herself that she is responsible for all his needs, and is almost grateful he doesn't realize it's her.

She sighs, blinking back tears, and props him up a little better, reasoning that it will make it easier for him to breathe. 

On Days 13 and 14, as she continues to get better, her cough lessening and her body feeling stronger, he gets worse. 

On Day 13 he's actually lucid for a while, in the morning, after she's fed him and changed him into a fresh shirt. She steps out of his room to sneeze in the hallway, then goes downstairs to change into another rag mask before returning to him.

He's sitting up in bed, eyes cracked open, but offers no reaction when she first walks in. She wonders if he's aware of her.

"Rey." He says simply, lowly. 

"You're sick, Kylo." She doesn't know what else to say. He nods, grimacing.

"Do you...do you think it's...."

"I'm not sure. But considering that I definitely had it, and you were taking care of me..."

"Yeah." He whispers, swallowing hard, and lets his eyes fall shut.

"You haven't really been awake since yesterday." She knows that if it were her, she would want to know how much time had passed.

"And you fed me?" He croaks.

"Yep. You weren't all there, but enough for me to give you broth and medicine, and...everything else."

His eyes flutter back open, and she can see in his gaze he knows what she means. He nods slowly, and she nods back.

"Try to stay awake long enough for me to make you a real meal, okay? I'll be back soon."

"Okay."

"You want some music?" She asks, gesturing over to the Bose in the corner of the room, and he brightens the tiniest fraction, nodding.

"The Chopin, that's on the windowsill."

She picks up the requested CD and slides it into the slot. The soft brushes of piano music fill the room, coming from unseen speakers, and as she exits the room, his eyes following her, he bears the smallest trace of a smile. 

"Kylo?" 

"Mmm?"

"You're gonna be okay, no matter what we have to do." She echoes his exact words from days ago, wishing half her face weren't obscured by the mask, wishing he could see the determination in the line of her mouth.

"I trust you." He whispers, then lets his head lean back against the pillows and his eyes slip closed again.

Rey's grateful suddenly, that her makeshift mask is such absorbent cotton. It does a very good job of catching the tears that fall slowly, but steadily.

\-------

She prepared for this moment, roasted a metric ton of high nutrient vegetables like onions and beets. She throws on a side of steamed spinach, loaded with garlic, and gives the entire plate a healthy squeeze of lemon juice.

She watches him intently, the entire time he listlessly eats. Suddenly, intensely, she understands his insistence that she eat, before.

"I can still taste it," he says around the food, as he places the first bite of spinach in his mouth.

"Not everyone's symptoms are the same." She mutters quickly, and his eyes dart back up to her. After a moment, he nods.

When he's done, she points to the mug of tea on the nightstand and he downs it in five swallows, grimacing after, touching his throat with a slightly shaky hand. 

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom and then I think I need to sleep again," he declares in a low rasp, and Rey mutters something about helping him.

He holds a hand out, palm flat. "I can do it on my own."

"You seem really weak, and I don't want you to-"

"Rey, who knows what the next few days will bring," he says, more fire in his voice, and despite the way the sickness has diminished him, he's still compelling, his voice and his face commanding in a way Rey still can't explain. "I would like to maintain this one thread of dignity while I still can."

She rhythmically clenches her jaw for a moment, chewing on his words, then nods. She supposes now really isn't the time for recalcitrance. 

He takes slow, careful steps into the en-suite, and by the time he's emerged, he's shivering. 

She grabs the heating blanket from where she's already had it plugged in next to his bed, and lays it between his sheet and comforter. He sighs as the heat seeps through to him, and she sees his eyes have gone a little glassy.

"Rest now, darling." 

He stares up at her as he settles into the blankets. 

"Will you run your fingers through my hair?" She opens her mouth to protest, but he cuts her off, "I know we shouldn't. I see how careful you're being to avoid touching me. But..." He squeezes his eyes shut, "please?"

She clenches her jaw again, then removes one hand from the yellow kitchen glove, and just barely sifts her fingertips among his wavy dark locks. She pushes it back off his forehead more, smoothing it against the side of his skull and back around his ears. The second he appears to have drifted off, which doesn't take long, she pulls her hand back abruptly, but with a twist of reluctance in her stomach. She knows, deep down, it's likely the last time she'll touch him for days.

Late in the evening she gets him to swallow another half a mug of broth, and after removing the heating blanket and taking his temperature one last time, she heads up to bed.

She leaves both their doors open, just in case. Just in case he wakes in the night, and she hears him stirring, in need of something. For the first six hours he makes no noise, but she jolts awake at every creak in the walls or branch rustling outside, hyper-vigilant. She knows she needs good sleep herself, if she wants to continue getting better, yet she swears she felt better today anyway. She's convinced she has willed herself into suppressing her symptoms for the sake of taking care of him. 

At five AM, when the thin blue light is beginning to filter into the windows, he starts coughing.

\-------

Day 14: The cough. A wet, wracking sound that makes Rey cringe every time he lets it out. His huge, powerful body curls up jerkily with the motion. 

An hour after a few sips of milk and his requisite Tylenol, Rey's stomach drops. 

The pills didn't lower his temperature. 101.8, which is basically where it was when she first took it, earlier that morning.

After one especially fierce bout of coughing, Rey hears an an odd sound, and with fear un-steadying her hands, lowers her ear to his chest.

A rocky, bronchial rattle. He's unconscious again, doesn't respond to the calling of his name or her gloved hand pressed to his cheek. Rey feels the heat of his skin seep instantly through the thin rubber of her glove, and she begins pacing the room, unable to do anything else for him and yet unable to do anything to calm herself down.

She considers calling Poe, calling Rose, _hell,_ calling Kaydel, anyone who might be able to provide a shred of reassurance and perhaps some advice for how she should take care of him. But she knows any reassurance would last her only seconds, if it worked at all, and she's read every article and seen every video from people much more qualified than anyone she knows, on how to care for a seriously ill victim of the virus.

Which means there's nothing more for her to do.

Rey's known powerlessness before, but this particular lack of control has to be the worst she's ever felt.

It's nearly noon when she hears his breathing shift and she whirls around to look at him.

He's panting. Just barely. The rate of his breathing accelerated so slightly. _Oxygen? Is he not getting enough oxygen?_

Suddenly, the answer falls into her head like an anvil. 

_"The way I see it, our exposure to the virus has been about equal..." He had told her._

_"Does your virologist friend concur with this logic?"_

_"I did not ask Phasma about this one."_

Phasma. _Phasma._ She snatches his phone from the kitchen table and flies back up the stairs, using his fingertip to unlock his phone. It's so damp with sweat she has to wipe his hand on the bed sheet and try again.

Phasma is right there, in his recent calls, and Rey taps her name without hesitation.

It rings once. Twice. An agonizing third time.

Just before Rey is sure she'll be sent to voicemail, the ring cuts off. A beat of silence.

"Ren. How's Rey doing?" Her voice is cool and commanding.

Rey gapes, shocked for a second, then gathers her wits enough to splutter, "Phasma hi, actually this is Rey, I'm doing okay, but Kylo isn't."

She hears some shifting on the other end of the line. "How so?" 

"He got a fever in the the early morning two nights ago. He's barely been lucid since then. Fever between 102 and 104 with Tylenol to bring it down. Today he started coughing, it's wet, and I can hear that rocky sound when he exhales. His breathing has just begun to accelerate."

There's another beat of silence, and Rey ignores the pounding of her own heart long enough to almost ask Phasma if she's still there. A tiny, pained sigh finally echoes over the phone, and Rey abandons all attempts to seem dignified or collected. "What do I need to do, Phasma? You have to tell me what to do."

"In three hours I'll be at a drive-up testing center in Newark. Can you get there?"

Rey can't remember seeing keys anywhere. "Does Ren have a car?"

"Yes. It's in a garage just down the block from his house. There should be a clicker somewhere, that gets you access to the garage." She takes a breath then says, even more sternly, "You need to get him here, now, Rey. This hospital has the capability to do testing on-site, and they aren't officially open yet. But they're running a few samples from inside the hospital, checking for baseline function on all the equipment. If you can make it before it becomes open to the public, we can get his results soon."

"When should I leave?"

"As soon as possible."

She's planning every step of this when a cold wash of dread hits her. "But...I'm not well yet. I feel okay, but I'm sure I'm still contagious. Should I even be leaving the house?" Her rough voice takes on a hysterical tinge. 

"No, you should not," Phasma sounds weary. "But you're the only one there, right?"

"Yeah, but surely he has another friend, someone else who isn't such a risk, to come and get him."

"That would expose a healthy person to at least one, maybe two probable cases." 

"But-"

"Rey, trust me. There is no good way to do this. Sick people are driving to these testing checkpoints all over the country. You have to do what must be done."

Rey presses her toes into the floor, hard, letting the pain center her.

"I...okay. Can you send me the address? I'll text you when I'm on my way." She grits her teeth. "We. When we are on our way."

"Sure."

Rey goes to hang up, but hears Phasma call her name at the last second.

"Yeah?"

"It's gonna be fine, Rey. You'll take good care of him."

"How do you know that?" Rey says, absent of any spite, just filled with uncertainty. 

"He talked about you, a little bit," Phasma admits haltingly, "Said you were smart, caring. Really careful to follow precautions when you first got sick."

Rey blinks in surprise. _He was probably concerned about taking care of you,_ a corner of her brain reminds her, _the same way you are about him._

Rey lets out a slow, long breath. "Thanks. See you soon."

In the abstract, the complexity of the plan should terrify her. Yet having something to do, a checklist to follow, a challenge to surmount...it grounds her. Gives her purpose.

She looks up his block on Google Maps. Locates the garage. Finds the keys hanging on a nail on the kitchen wall. It's just a fob, flat and square and sleek.

She takes a shower, puts on her freshest set of clothes, then disposable gloves and mask, thanking whatever prudent thought made her preserve them. She checks on him one more time before she leaves. She shouldn't be more than ten minutes, yet the thought of leaving him alone...it makes her chest tight.

He's passed out, as usual, breaths still crackling and slightly ragged. After a moment spent cataloging the moles and freckles on his face, she forces herself to turn away, and opens the door without looking back.

\-------

She makes it into the garage without encountering a single other person. 

When she presses the "lock" button on the fob, she almost isn't surprised.

The gleaming black Jaguar in the corner flashes its lights and makes a luxurious chirp. Rey didn't know _sounds_ could be expensive, before today.

When she slides into the driver's seat, for the first time in her life, she thanks Plutt for something.

For teaching her to drive manuals, so that she could help move the cars around on his junkyard lot.

She presses her foot down on the clutch and praises every moment she spent parking some busted old jalopy in that muddy field back in England. 

The car hums to life underneath her and within thirty seconds, she's idling in front of his house.

She has to place an ice cold washcloth on his forehead and pinch him on the forearm, hard, to get him to wake up.

She can help him limp to the car, but she can't outright carry him.

And for him to limp, he has to be awake.

As her fingers squeeze together, his eyes flutter open, then he belatedly jerks away. His voice is barely more than a whisper. "Rey...what?"

"We're going to get you tested," she explains softly, "I just need you to stay awake long enough to walk to the car. Can you do that?"

She sees the fear grow in his eyes, as he takes stock of his body, maybe, and how it feels. She scrambles for what will reassure him. "Phasma will be there. I called to talk to her, about what I should do for you."

He is briefly overtaken by a coughing fit, but once it subsides, he takes a sip of the cold broth sitting at the bedside and then nods. She pushes his running shoes on when he swings his legs over the end of the bed, then stands, unsteadily. 

He leans heavily on her as they make their way across the landing, then she walks one step ahead of him on the stairs, letting him grip her shoulders for balance.

She lets her eyes prick with tears, while he can't see her. 

This scares her. It scares her in a way her own illness didn't. Even in the worst moments she was never this helpless. He's the one who's sick, seriously so, so Rey knows it's ridiculous to want reassurance from him, but she does. She wants him to say it will all be okay, she wants him to say to just be patient, that it will resolve, and life will return to normal.

When they started all this, he was the one in control. He was the one who knew what to do; the one who knew everything.

Rey's finding she doesn't like that role very much. 

They repeat the process climbing down the stairs outside the house, after they've paused for her to lock the door.

His eyes are already closed by the time he slumps into the passenger seat.

Rey speeds on the way to the hospital, barely registering the voice of the GPS, following the directions numbly. She barely registers anything, so it's probably good the streets are so empty.

When she pulls into the hospital complex, she calls Phasma, and follows verbal instruction to a small, outlying building surrounded by several white tents. A team of people, in full protective gear, with masks and face shields, mill around a few outdoor tables. Several heads shoot up as she approaches.

From the mix, a tall person emerges. Rey can see a peek of platinum blonde hair under the surgical cap they wear, and as they approach, she notices the set of ice blue, calculating eyes.

"Rey?"

"Yeah. Phasma?"

"Yes. Hi." 

Rey musters a weak attempt at a smile, then remembers she's wearing a mask, and leans back to allow a better view of the man next to her. "What do you need from him?"

"A couple of swabs." Phasma says, sounding a little grim, and circles the car as Rey rolls the window down.

Phasma spends a moment using the stethoscope, listening to his heart and lungs, then seems to count his breaths while looking at her watch.

"Ren? Ren, it's Phaz. Can you hear me, buddy?" She gently shakes his shoulder, and maybe it's realizing someone other than Rey is there, maybe it's the steely urgency in Phasma's voice, but his eyes crack open for a moment. "Hi, hi, good to see you awake. I need to open your mouth to take some samples, okay?"

He nods, letting his eyes close again, but opens his mouth slowly, as though it's on rusted hinges.

Phasma takes a sample from his throat and two from his nasal passages. He barely seems to notice.

"Has he coughed anything up?"

"Yes. Mucus. Looks exactly like the stuff from a bad cold."

Her brow pinches, "So it appears infected?"

Rey's stomach flutters. "Yes." Phasma says nothing. The PPE makes her expression impossible to read. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Rey presses.

"Honestly, it could go either way. All depends on whether or not he tests positive."

"Well," Rey begins, as though she has a response, but it never comes. Phasma stares at her for a moment. 

"I'm testing you, too."

Before Rey can protest, Phasma's gone to retrieve a second kit. She submits to the swabs, then watches as Phasma seals them into the sterile tubes.

"You're going home with an oxygen tank, a few plastic cannulae, and a vibrating vest. The vest will help mobilize whatever is in his lungs, and he can cough it up. Only use it when he's lucid, which he should try to be a little more often. Don't be afraid to wake him up."

"I pinched him hard to get him to stand up from bed."

Rey thinks she sees a hint of a smile through Phasma's mask. "Atta girl."

"If his labored breathing gets any worse, hook him up to the tank. There's instructions on the canister. No open flames, got it?"

"Got it."

The equipment barely fits in the comically small trunk on this stupid car. Why couldn't he have been a rich idiot who owned an Escalade?

Wrangling him back into the house is equally as difficult, but with Phasma's blessing, she has no problem gently tapping his face to get him to stay alert, until he's back in bed. 

She takes the car back. Carries all the equipment with her. Tries to enjoy the feeling of the sun on her face and the bite of a chill in the air as she walks. _One deep breath. Two. Three._

Day 14 is the first day she forgets to record in her daily calendar. 

Other things have become infinitely more important.

\-------

She spends the next twelve hours in the library, attuned to his every sound through the walls. She's too scared that if she goes back upstairs, she'll miss something.

She wakes him three times a day, requiring varying degrees of roughness to do so, and feeds him. Pureed soups full of vitamins and cup after cup of tea. In a brief moment of clarity, she asks him if he feels well-hydrated, and he jokes that his pee has never been this clear.

"Have you even seen your pee in the last four days?"

He huffs, and coughs a little, "No. But you have."

"I can corroborate that it is very pale yellow."

He grins smugly, and the moment of normalcy is so needed, so soothing, that it draws every other moment into even sharper contrast. She feels her eyes mist over. She gobbles up every second of eye contact, every word and breath and movement in his face, locking it all away inside her where she can relive it after the sick slumber has reclaimed him again.

He puts the vibrating vest on, and Rey turns on the little machine, following the instructions Phasma texted. It emits a low humming noise, and she can see his solid wall of a torso shaking a little. After a moment or two, she encourages him to start coughing.

Rey must admit, in the fifteen minutes following, she's never seen someone hack up so much mucus. She's both horrified and grateful by the time it's over. 

It gives her some false hope, she imagines his lungs to be clear, when he drifts off into a less restless sleep than earlier in the day.

By midnight that night, he's wheezing, and the cadence of his breaths sounds more shallow. Unwilling to disturb Phasma, Rey hooks up the cannula to the oxygen tank, and places the nubbins into his nostrils. He doesn't even stir.

She sleeps upright in one of the library's leather chairs, an afghan swaddled around her. In the morning she hears him groan, and he whispers listlessly, asking for the bathroom. When they get back, she forces him to perk up enough that he can do another treatment with the vest, and another untold amount of mucus comes from him.

The dread starts to overtake her again. She convinced herself, driving home from Newark, that this stuff would be the last resort. That he was unlikely to need it, considering.

Considering that he was young, and strong, and took good care of himself, and self-isolated so completely and so soon. 

_Yet she got it, didn't she? She was young and healthy, too. Why shouldn't he?_

_But what had dragged him under? What had made it so bad?_

She paced back and forth across the landing, hands on her waist, muttering to herself.

"Missing that gene? The one that helps your lung cells resist entry of the virus..."

"...could be worse if this is an infection secondary to his immune system being overwhelmed, and weakened."

"Getting enough nutrients to help him recover shouldn't..."

She stares wearily into the library for a moment. At the chair that has become her bed.

It has it's benefits, she supposes. There's no chance he can see her, in the moments where she gets overwhelmed and a few of those ever-ready tears spill over onto her face again.

In the late afternoon, she actually manages to take a nap. She's not fully under, still aware of the room, and sure she'll wake up any second.

It's in this liminal space that she daydreams.

Daydreams about normal life. With him. Living in the same house for two weeks has forced such sudden intimacy between them that it isn't difficult for her brain to manifest so many visions of what a real relationship might be like.

_Knocking their hips together as they cook side-by-side._

_Watching a movie, his head lain in her lap, sifting her fingers through his hair._

_Unlocking the door after an especially hard day, biting back the tears, crossing the dining room as he wordlessly opens his arms and she crawls into his lap._

_Picking up a pint of ice cream on a late night bodega run, because he mentioned, weeks ago, that he wanted to try that flavor some time._

_Waking in the middle of the night, rolling over to find his hot, hard body waiting to give what she desired from it._

All these things and a dozen others pass across her mind in a flurry of soundless vignettes. 

When she startles awake, a crick in her neck from her awkward posture, a shroud of dread passes over her.

Again, she knows the statistics. She knows so few people in his age group, with no preexisting conditions or outside concerns, are actually taken by this.

But some are. Some do. _Die_ , that is.

And the thought of it happening to him is even more unbearable than when she considered it might be her. 

Because she knows what she wanted out of life, and she knows she's realized most of it. She got out of England. She got a good education. She made good friends, started building a family. She's had a hundred tipsy nights stumbling out of the T station with Rose, on their way to the bars in Seaport, five seasons of community softball with Finn, laughing in the humid heat of the Boston summer on a patchy field at sunset. She's sat back and stared at her bank account balance in the dark, letting the small but solid number soothe her perpetual fear of homelessness. 

_But what more does Kylo want? How many of his dreams have transpired?_ _He might have a lot left that he hopes will happen. A lot left that would be lost if he were gone._

Selfishly, she admits that none of those moments she dreamt of can happen if he doesn't make it through. She momentarily hates herself for thinking of how this will affect her, but...

He makes her happy. Against all oods; in a strange new place, during a time of debilitating fear and uncertainty she felt _good_ , with him.

She wants to keep it.

Before she can dwell much longer, she jumps six inches out of her seat.

A phone is ringing. In his room.

She rushes in to see Phasma's name emblazoned on the screen.

"Yes?" She says, breathless somehow. She's only traveled twenty feet.

"Rey, the test results came back." Rey could kiss her for refusing to waste time on pleasantries. "He doesn't have it."

Her insides all lurch at once. "What?" She whispers, staring down at the pale, sleeping man below her.

"He doesn't. We ran more tests, on his samples, and I think he has a horrible chest infection, but he tested negative for COVID. Which means we can treat it. Antibiotics will help."

"I-" Rey starts, but she's so relieved she can't continue, overcome. She flounders for a moment. "How can I get them? Is there a drive through pharmacy, or maybe they could leave it on the cu-"

"Rey," Phasma mutters gently, firmly. "I'm not done." Rey's heart somersaults. "You tested positive. You did have it." She stops breathing. "Keep in mind these tests aren't perfect. Far from 100% reliable. It's certainty strange that you would have it while he does not, but who knows. He could be an asymptomatic carrier, he could have genetic variations that have helped prevent it from infecting him, the test could be wrong...it's unclear. All I know is to be grateful he didn't get it from you."

"Do..." Rey interrupts, "do I need to leave? Does someone else need to look after him?"

"Logic dictates that with his chest infection, we wouldn't want him to be vulnerable to any other potential pathogens. And though you're feeling better, the virus is still present in your body." She sighs. "In a perfect world, yes, you would leave and someone else would take care of him. But that's just not realistic. He's far too sick to be left alone, I don't know of anyone else who can reasonably do it, his mother's higher risk due to her age, and all his friends are people from work, who were exposed too. And besides, trying to sanitize everything you've touched in that house? Impossible."

Rey understands, but doesn't know what conclusion she's meant to draw. "So what should we do?"

"Stay there. Keep taking care of him. Keep disinfecting your gloves, don't be in his room unless you have to." 

She rushes out of his room and resumes pacing in the library. "Keep a mask on, on both of you, at all times. Wash the masks every night in hot water and some Lysol. Keep continually wiping down the house. We don't know when he'll be mobile again, and when he is, you want the house to be as free from sources of the virus as possible." 

"Okay."

"Some good news. Recent evidence shows that you were most contagious right before you got sick. So I'm hopeful that the trend is a linear one, and as you get further into recovery, you continue to be less of a risk."

Rey collapses into her armchair again. It's only when she places her hand on the armrest that she realizes she's sweating. 

"I'll drop off the antibiotics on his doorstep tonight. I'm likely giving you far more than you need. I'm also bringing you a stethoscope so that over the next few days, you can monitor the sounds in his lungs and see if the infection starts to resolve."

"You realize I am not in any way qualified for that, right?"

"I'm not asking you to perform an ileocolic resection," _Rey doesn't bother pointing out she doesn't even know what that means,_ "I'll tell you exactly what to listen for and you can describe what you hear. If he starts to look blue, if his wheezing gets any worse, if you see him working too hard to breathe, call me immediately."

"Phasma?" Rey's hand clenches down on the brass tacks at the edge of the chair.

"Yes?"

"Thank you," she says it earnestly, fervently, "If anything had ha... I had no idea what to do. To take care of him. Your guidance is the only thing keeping me from... from feeling like I'm going to go insane."

"I..." Phasma splutters, seeming to grope for words. "thank you, but I'm just doing my job, Rey."

"I think we both know you're doing more than that." Rey lets her fingers trace the brass tacks, focusing on each cool bump, predictable and rhythmic. 

Rey swears she can almost hear Phasma about to offer another rebuttal, but finally she just mutters, "Yeah, I am."

"Text me when you drop off the stuff."

"I will."

"Okay, bye."

Rey hangs up. She takes a few deep breaths. And behind the mask, for a brief moment, she smiles.

\-------  
  
On Day 16, she calls Poe. She tells him everything, every second and detail of what's happened since she got there. 

The wave of solace it brings her is indescribable. She would have called him days ago, if she knew just talking about it would help so much. 

The days are hard. She's lonely most of the time. Video chatting helps, a little, but the days seem to stretch to infinity as she waits, agonizingly, to see if he gets better.

She boils more vegetables. Purees them to make more vitamin-rich soups. Spoon feeds them to him. His lucid moments are rare, and precious. The next time he has one, she tells him it isn't corona. He nods, and she sits quietly while he brushes two tears off his cheeks with a shaking hand. From then on, every time he emerges from sleep, she thinks of her best jokes, just so she can throw one at him when he's awake enough to hear it. 

She never fails to get a smile out of him, even if it's a weak one. 

\-------

On Day 19, she stares at his body while he's sat in the bathtub. He's lost so much of his bulk, his muscles becoming more and more lean as the days stretch on. She wonders what he'll say, once he's well enough to look in the mirror and see for himself.

He'll be alive, so she has a feeling he won't care much.

That night, as she lies in bed, she feels her phone buzz. Her heart jumps. _Is someone else sick?_

 _KYLO NYC SEX_ stares back at her from the too-bright screen.

"Your throat cleared up," he says, as soon as she answers. "You sound like you again. So I just wanted to hear your voice a little more."

She blushes. She's taken this man to the bathroom and bathed him and fed him and yet one intimate word from him and _her cheeks have gone pink_.

She pulls a copy of the New Yorker from her bag and reads a fiction article to him. 

By the time she's reaching the final paragraphs, she hears his breathing grow slow, and deep. She pictures him in bed as he was earlier that day, no longer sweating, the violet circles under his eyes finally fading. 

She closes her eyes and listens to those slow, deep breaths. No more wheeze. No more rattle.

That night her sleep is still and dreamless.

She doesn't need the dreams anymore. The things that used to live in them just might really happen.

\-------

On Day 21, she watches another news report. More deaths in the US than anywhere else in the world. More deaths in New York than anywhere else in the US. 

She falls back onto the couch, trying to conceptualize all the lives, all the families affected. All the kids who will never get to meet their grandparents, all the weddings that will never happen now, the birthday parties planned, never to be celebrated.

She realizes that the spectre of this illness is not finite. It will always loom above them, even after its presence is not so terrifying. It will fade into the background, among those countless other demons, and in a few years, hearing that a friend's great aunt died of coronavirus will no longer be the consequence of a shocking new reality, but of one that has grown mundane, one whose vitriol has tempered into something less horrifying but no less sad.

"The earth is always coming up with new ways to get rid of us," Maz, the old cafe owner had said, when Kylo called her, before all this. Rey had furrowed her brow and he had smirked, acknowledging the ramblings of an old woman with his smugness of youth, but Rey now thinks that what Maz had expressed was...wise. Prescient. Not all threats may grind the world to a halt the way this one did, but that won't stop the threats from happening.

Rey is deep in this malaise when she finally snaps back to reality, and she can't stomach any more details of what's happening or what they think is to come. She flips off the TV and looks to her right, to the dining room.

Her headphones and cell stare back at her.

She rolls her jaw around for a moment, then stands up, slides them on over her ears, and taps. 

The rock-country riff that opens the song gets her blood pumping, and she closes her eyes, picturing a corn field, a glittering costume and wild hair.

By the time the second verse starts up, she's singing along. Belting it. She's not sure when it started but it feels _good_ , to be making noise, to be moving her body and her lungs and screaming out her vitality. 

She takes a deep breath just as she's about to launch into the last chorus and-

-there he is, standing in the doorway.

In his boxers, with a blanket held around himself like a shawl and a tired, bemused smile on his face.

_Kylo. Standing._

"OH MY GOD!" she screams, half from the shock of seeing him out of bed, and half from being surprised in the middle of a musical catharsis so deep she swears she dissociated for a few seconds. He winces.

"What are you doing?" She says, panting through her mask.

"Investigating a disturbance of the peace," he croaks. His voice sounds awful, a gravelly hiss. "What are you doing?"

The song fades out, and she doesn't get a chance to respond. He shakes his head. "I don't know why I asked. You're clearly having a private moment. Between you and Gaga."

"Her music is powerful." She defends, and he puts his hands up as though conceding her point. "None of what she sings about is anything like what I've experienced, and yet it makes me feel...so much."

"I'm not here to deny anything to the woman who just saved my life." He says, pulling his blanket tighter around himself. "I'll blast Gaga's latest album on the whole house speakers, if you want."

"I didn't save your life," she shifts on her feet anxiously, "you don't have COVID."

"Maybe not," he leans against the doorway, "but I was sicker than I've ever been." She concedes that with a nod. "So I guess we'll never know, how much I needed you."

She doesn't know what to say to that. She sets her phone on the table, traces its edge with a gloved finger. "There are whole-house speakers?"

He doesn't answer, so she looks up to see him pointing to one corner, where the wall meets the ceiling, and she can just barely make out a white mesh grate, which blends with the plaster of the wall almost perfectly. "Ooh, creepy. Very Big Brother."

"Unfortunately I haven't used it to blast communist propaganda yet." 

"Shame." She pouts.

"Truly."

"Who knows how much faster you would have recovered if we had a continuous loop of Bad Romance playing throughout every room."

He honks a short, discordant laugh. "I'm pretty content with the recovery I got, thank you."

As if on cue, he shivers, and has a brief but deep, powerful coughing attack. "Cough still productive?" He nods, and she points to a tissue box just behind him, on the hall table. He grabs one and spits into it, looking at it and grimacing. 

"Back to bed. You've had your great adventure to the first floor, and besides, we aren't supposed to be in the same room unless it's absolutely essential."

It's time for her to sleep as well, so she trails him to the stairs and he watches from his open bedroom door as she ascends again, headed for her room. She's about to call goodnight when he speaks first.

"Rey." He says it, but not like a question.

She descends two steps to meet his gaze. "Yes?"

"How long til we can touch?" _The way he says it,_ sharp and heated despite all the sickness in his voice, sinks into her like a shot of whiskey, prickling and warming. The desire flickering in his dark eyes isn't helping, either.

"At least another week." 

"'At least?'"

"I think I'll need to consult Phasma to be sure."

"You're gonna tell her I asked when I could touch you again?" He presses, aghast.

"I'm not the one who told her about the _close contact_ in the first place, am I?"

He glowers. She smirks.

"You know what," he leans his head against the door, "I don't care if you consult with Cuomo, I don't care if you climb on the roof and scream it to all of Harlem. As long as we can put our hands on each other, I don't fucking care."

She swallows hard, grips the banister to avoid stepping closer to him, as her every cell is begging her to. "I don't care either."

"And mouths," he adds, "mouths on each other too."

"Yes."

They stare at each other for a moment, and the tension crackling between them, and Rey finally seeks to break it by turning away.

"Rey," he mutters again, and once more, no question in his tone.

"Kylo."

"Thank you."

She bites her lower lip, then remembers he can't see it. "You're welcome."

"Remember when you asked what I thought would happen next with us, and I said that we would look each other up next time one of us was in town?"

She nods, remembering the brisk air, the way the sun burnished his hair, the content sigh he let out after every sip of coffee.

"I don't think that'll work for me. Not," he gestures with one hand, to his room, gestures upstairs, to her room, "not after all of this." 

"Not after we took care of each other?"

He nods in agreement, but his eyes are nervous as he does it.

She sniffs, and spends a moment imagining it. Maybe three weeks from now, when the numbers have finally started to fall, and things are a little more normal again. Some businesses reopened, less travel restrictions placed. She imagines getting on the train back, of working from home in the living room in her townhouse, her roommates on other Zoom calls in the kitchen or on the back stairs. She thinks of crossing the Common to meet Rose and Finn, sitting on opposite sides of the Ether Monument to chat at an appropriate distance. 

She thinks of not touching anyone, for months maybe, until things are finally okay again. 

She misses her friends, sure. Sometimes she misses the town that's become her home.

But every part of her rebels against the idea of being away from him.

Not after all she did to see him through this. Not after all he did for her, to try and keep her safe.

She listens to that rebellion.

"I don't think it would work for me either." 

His shoulders seem to lose some of their stiffness, and she thrusts her chin in his direction. "Time for bed now. Don't let the memories of my melodious singing voice keep you from sleep."

There's that goosey bark of laughter again. _God,_ his throat must be inflamed. He turns from the doorway and she watches him crawl into his huge bed, wrapping himself in the mound of blankets like it's a nest, tangled and chaotic. She creaks up the remaining stairs.

She hugs a pillow to her body, and in the last few seconds before she's fully asleep, she can almost pretend it's him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Home stretch, my friends. Good things only from here on out.
> 
> Heart of Hate will get updated this weekend. Hope everyone is doing ok :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone is safe and well. ❤️

Rey and Poe bustle across the marble lobby to the glass doors that mark the restaurant's entrance. 

The hostess collects their coats as Rey surveys the room, realizing why. The little bistro tables are packed close together: no extra space for a knee-length down jacket without the risk that an errant sleeve might droop into someone's Bearnaise sauce.

A man rises from a long group table and raises a hand overhead. Poe waves back as he and Rey begin to weave their way across the room.

"Again, I'm so sorry."

"Poe, please stop apologizing," she insists, "I'm getting a free dinner out of it." 

"I know, but I promised you no work stuff to get in the way of your visit, and-"

"This is not at all what I meant, and you know it," she reaches out to pinch his shoulder, "besides, you've worked with these people for years and I know none of them. Now's my chance to dish out all the dirt on you."

Poe snorts. "What dirt?"

"Like that time in college when you wore that bra made out of lollipops on Mardi Gras, but your sweat melted the sugar, so when you went to take it off, you were too drunk to notice it sticking and it ripped out your chest ha-"

He cuts her off with a hand over her mouth. "Something _many_ people have experienced, I'm certain. No need to mention that."

She squirms her face free. "Yeah, sure."

"Don't bother with any stories from before I moved to the city, maybe." 

"So, nothing from college?"

"Nope."

"But that's all my best material," she whines, as she turns her body to squeeze between two chairs hanging into the walkway.

"So sorry to rob you of all your most humiliating anecdotes," Poe drawls, "come visit me more often and I'm sure you'll generate some new ones."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

But she never hears his response, because they've reached the table and everyone is standing up or smiling or waving, radiating the warm fondness that Poe manages to engender in everyone he meets. He points and gestures around the table, providing names and the name of the country in whose consulate each person works. There are a few others from South American countries, like Poe, but also diplomatic employees for Kenya, Iceland, and a few places in Eastern Europe.

They sit down, and Rey is comfortably cramped between Poe and a woman named Jannah, assistant to the ambassador for Turkey. She spends a bit telling Rey about how she splits her time between here and Istanbul, how she learned Turkish as a kid while her dad was in the military, about how much cheaper good wine is over there.

But eventually everyone settles into the expected conversation at these monthly dinners: talk of development contracts and expansion into rural communities, recent triumphs won by NGOs (which, Jannah informs her, means "non government organizations,) and a dozen other diplomatic subjects Rey is content to listen to, but has next to nothing to contribute.

It's fine, not so different from their dinner the previous night with Finn and Rose, wherein the three of them talked over the finer points of natural language processing in different coding languages while Poe sat back and contentedly sipped his gin and tonic.

It's only then that Rey notices the empty seat, across and one over from her. The shy younger guy, Mitaka _,_ she remembers, has his briefcase on it, she can see his ID hanging from the handle. A large hand is moving it onto the floor, and Rey's eyes trace past the hand, up the arm and the shoulder, to see-

_Him._

Who _him_ is, she has no idea.

But suddenly, desperately, she wants to know. _Needs to._

He's clearly tall, but from down here where she's seated he looks _huge_ , all broad shoulders and solid torso housed in a crisp black suit and tie. 

He's staring at the other end of the table, a smirk on his face, appearing to watch two of his colleagues, the blonde woman and a redheaded guy, as they heatedly argue.

The smirk widens, creasing his cheeks in a way that looks almost like dimples. He's got long, dark hair brushing his jaw.

It looks soft. _She wants to touch it._

His face is peppered with beauty marks. _She wants to touch those too._

Poe, who had been hunched over his phone answering an email, finally glances up to yell, "Ren!" 

Dark eyes snap away from the end of the table to the man next to her, but a second later, snap again, right onto Rey. 

_She stops breathing._

She knows, even as it happens, that she will never be able to tell anyone, because of how ridiculous it sounds.

But it's true. Her breath ceases to continue filling her lungs, her chest frozen, expanded to half its normal volume, as those dark eyes take her in. She somehow manages to feel them everywhere: her lips, her eyes, her collarbone, though his gaze doesn't move.

It's steady. _Commanding._ She couldn't look away even if she wanted to.

"Dameron," his voice is lush, low and full and exactly befitting every other part of him. Rey crosses her legs tighter under the table.

His eyes finally drift away from her. Poe, still intermittently occupied with his phone, doesn't notice what's happened.

But someone else does. As Rey shifts in her seat and straightens the napkin on her lap, Jannah catches her eye.

Rey pretends to look confused, but at the loaded glance Jannah darts between them, Rey offers the only response she can, a barely perceptible shrug. Jannah just grins softly, shrugging back, and turns back to her vodka soda.

Poe and _The Man_ are chatting softly, but as soon as she turns back to them, Rey takes advantage of a momentary pause. 

"And who's this?" She asks brightly, just as a waiter arrives at the end of the table proffering a huge tray of food.

Poe glances back, "Oh, uh, Rey. this is Ren. He's uh, he's a lawyer, like Mitaka." Poe passes a charcuterie board over Rey, into Jannah's waiting hands.

"Kylo." That fathomless voice, like dark chocolate and cold autumn air, hits her again. His hand is held out. "Ren's my last name. It's Kylo."

"Kylo," she repeats, unnoticing or unwilling to admit the way she just barely lets her tongue peek through on the L, "I'm Rey. Old Boston friend of Poe's."

"Hmm." He says, and their hands clasp, briefly and firmly. 

If Rey couldn't even look at the man without her heart picking up, she doesn't know why she expected a handshake to be any easier. She's overcome with a horrible impulse for him to _kiss_ her hand, like it's a hundred and fifty years ago, but thankfully she doesn't betray this wild desire through her words or actions.

"You must have some good stories about him." Kylo mutters, glancing over at Poe and raising his eyebrows dramatically. 

Rey grins, "Oh, some you can scarcely believe. But I've been forbidden from telling any of them."

He chuckles too, looking down at the table, licking his lips while he pulls his napkin into his lap. "Mmm. What a shame."

She shivers, so hard she's sure it must be visible.

It's just then that Poe places her dinner in front of her. 

Kylo must have had someone order for him, because he graciously accepts a bowl of French Onion Soup and a long wedge of a crispy, toasted baguette from Mitaka.

Despite the fact that he is very distinctly a part of their field, over the next hour he does about as much talking as Rey does.

Not because he doesn't know anything; that's evident from the sparse comments he does make.

He just doesn't seem to...want to. He eats his soup extremely erotically, as Rey should have expected, his jaw working through each bite and his throat seeming to travel four meters on every swallow, massive hands dwarfing his the tiny bulbous spoon.

He reacts to the conversations around him. Smiling, frowning in disagreement, pinching his brow at his colleagues' more controversial statements. 

But he doesn't talk much. Between dinner and dessert he sits back in his tiny bistro chair, dwarfing that too, and glances back and forth, seeming to tune into each different discussion in turn. 

_Finally, he catches her._

Takes notice of her eyes on him. For a moment he looks surprised -an expression she hasn't seen on him yet- and after a few seconds he blinks, plush mouth just barely turning up at the corners.

"And what do you do for a living, Rey?" 

"I'm a computer scientist for Rise Informatics, it's a healthcare research firm." 

"And how exactly do you science their computers?" He asks, face utterly blank but with a lilt in his voice that belies humor, and she gracelessly snorts. It earns her another tiny smirk.

"Well, I mostly help visualize data. I write the code for a variety of infographics, both static and video based, to either express data interpretations or describe data models."

"So you care a lot about design and organization, I take it." _He's running his finger over the edge of his water glass,_ God help her. 

"Yep, though you'd never know from the state of my suitcase right now." 

Another smirk. This one wider. Warmer. 

"How long are you in town for?"

"Another day and a half. Gotta get back to Boston for the work week."

"Just here to see Poe?"

She shakes her head. "Our friend Rose was here for a professional conference. So her husband tagged along, then so did I. Poe's had to suffer with all three of us in his apartment since Tuesday."

He blinks. "All three of you?"

"Yep. Rose and Finn in the guest room and me on the couch." She sips her wine. 

He glances needlessly around the table. "And where are they now?" 

"Back in Boston."

"So you get the guest room all to yourself, then?" She nods and he mirrors her, pretending to be impressed.

"The height of luxury."

She smiles. "Comparatively, yes."

They drift in and out of conversation, Kylo occasionally leaning across the table to explain some diplomatic concept to her when arguments get particularly spirited. She always listens intently, and scrambles to come up with a follow-up question to whisper back, just to keep those lingering looks and hushed tones a moment longer. 

Soon everyone's ordering dessert. Mitaka and Ren are debating the list of brandies, when Jannah catches her eye again.

"Having a good time?" She asks innocuously, but her eyes tell Rey something different.

"Yeah," Rey says on an awkward chuckle, "I am. You?"

"Great." Jannah leans a little closer, standing the tall menu up in front of their faces. "Just so you know, Kylo never talks to anyone new. Ever."

Rey furrows her brow as she takes another drink. 

"A few of us have brought friends before. He's even been seated near them a few times." She curls her shoulders closer, darts a glance over her menu to be sure no one's looking, "And he's always his usual self. Cool and kinda distant. Respectfully uncaring. Content to just watch the proceedings and only chime in when he's called on, basically."

Rey's heart speeds up a little, again. She sneaks her wine around their little paper fort and takes another fortifying sip.

"But he's talking to _you_."

Jannah's whisper is conspiratorial. Rey wants to pick up what she's putting down, wants to lean into the idea that he might like her, but it all seems so unlikely, and so juvenile to read into it like this.

"He is talking to me," she repeats a little blankly.

"I'm just saying," Jannah mutters as she finally lowers the menu. "Something to think about."

Once the barrier no longer serves to hide them, she finds his gaze. It's directed right at her.

She doesn't know what to say, or do. She's sure every reaction possible would tip him off.

Thankfully, she doesn't need to muster a response.

"Dessert?" He asks gently.

_Yes. Unbutton your shirt and let me lick the abs I'm pretty sure are lurking under there._

"Creme brulee?" Rey squeaks.

Jannah orders some sort of fancy pudding, and Kylo relays both their choices to the waiter at the end of the table. 

He's stretched his arm around the back of Mitaka's chair, and Rey can detect the curve of his bicep through the white fabric. 

_Take the shirt all the way off, actually. I want to nip at your arms, too._

The mellifluous roll of a French accent carries towards them. "And if anyone is interested while you wait on your desserts, there is a rooftop bar area that is normally only open in the summer. But since the air is very clear and affords a nice view of the city, we have opened it up for tonight. There is hot chocolate being served and an opportunity to take some nice pictures, perhaps." 

Rey's chair clatters back as she stands. "I'll do most anything for hot chocolate," which earns her a laugh from the entire group, pinkening her cheeks and causing her to look down at the floor. She glances over. Kylo's liquid obsidian eyes are locked on her.

She begins squeezing behind Poe, and Hux, and a few others to reach the walkway. "And as the only tourist here, I suppose I'm obligated to take some photos."

She turns left for the hallway and marches to the door at the end, which has a frosted glass pane and elegant black script reading "Stairwell." 

The tromp up six flights of stairs in her heeled boots leaves her breathless.

It's worth it. The bar area is hemmed in by tall hedges on three sides, strewn with fairy lights and low gray couches around firepits. Perhaps a dozen people are spread among the bar, the seating, and the balcony where a crystalline slice of downtown glitters before them. 

She approaches the bar and the bartender just nods wordlessly, sliding a delicate white mug across the counter. "Could I get a splash of Bailey's in there?" She requests softly, and he winks, giving her a fair bit more than a splash.

She's about to turn towards the view when the roof door swings open and a tall, broad figure emerges. "Can I get a second one as well?" She murmurs, without her gaze straying from his form.

She has time to reach the corner of the balcony before he finds her.

She holds out the second mug when he walks up. "You also a big hot chocolate fan?"

He shrugs, but takes the mug and cups his huge hands around it. She stares at them for a moment too long.

She's a little drunk, drunk enough for her tongue to grow loose but sober enough to be wary of it.

 _The drunkenness wins out._ "I like you."

The bald honesty seems to have shattered some of his cool, because his mouth parts and he stares at her for a moment before clearing his throat, taking a sip of his drink, clearing his throat a second time. "What?"

"I like you." She repeats more firmly, and takes a sip of her own, turning to survey the view instead of him.

He swallows, fingers drumming against the mug, then seems to work up the courage for whatever he has to say. "What do you uh, what do you like about me?"

He looks nervous, as though she might suddenly pivot and make fun of him, and she worries for a moment that she won't be able to say what he wants to hear. She backtracks. "Oh I dunno, I just do."

"No, come on," he wheedles in a low voice, turning his body away from the rail and towards her. "What?"

She shrugs again, deciding she's too tipsy to articulate it. "Just do."

But just as he went from aloof to nervous, now he goes from nervous to commanding. 

He takes a step closer, eliminating the breath of space between them, then very gently pushes his hips against her belly. Her body presses back into the cold stone wall behind her, and she lets out a surprised breath.

_Her hips lean into him too, though._

She looks up, forced to tilt her head more now that he's so close, and those eyes, which she can't describe any other way than with words like _molten_ , trace her face. His voice is low and intimate. "Tell me what you like about me, Rey." 

It doesn't escape her, the way he went from a question to a directive. Some sliver of her sobriety snaps back into place.

She huffs to give voice to her feigned displeasure, and then grips the lapel of his beautiful wool coat.

"I like that you don't talk too much," she drags her fingers down to where the first button hole sits, "just when you actually have something good to say." Her finger hooks into the button hole, pulling more of his torso against her. "I like that you just sit back and watch everybody, listening. Amused by it all." 

"Hmm? What else?" His free hand braces against the wall near her head.

"I like how, when you were eating, you savor each bite for a moment and keep still, before you swallow." She's really showing her hand now, admitting how much she noticed. "I like how your mouth purses when you take a sip of your drink. I liked watching your hands make a million tiny folds in your napkin. I like the way you fill out that suit." Her hand drifts to his shoulder. "I like how your hair brushes your collar." 

"I like the way you talked to me." She admits, then turns her face away, winces. That one felt a little too vulnerable.

"How do I talk to you?"

"It didn't feel forced. You even made small talk feel good, like you were really interested." 

"I was really interested," he states, unequivocal.

Her own nervousness and uncertainty makes themselves known, her mouth twisted to one side and her face reddening. 

"I like you too, Rey."

She channels all of the boldness he seemed to muster a moment ago, and meets his gaze. "What do you like about me, Kylo?"

He considers her for a moment, his cold hand, formerly pressed to the wall, coming up to trace her jaw.

"I like how alive you seem," he mutters, and it's...unlike any compliment she has ever received. It hits her deep, and her breath hitches, which he must hear, because he presses just a fraction closer again. "Even when you were sitting there, listening, you were thrumming," his head tips down as his tongue curls around the final word, "glowing brighter than that gold around your neck."

She reaches up, traces the cold metal at her throat, and his eyes follow her fingers. "I like how clever you are. The way your eyes spark before you tell some witty joke. I like that you aren't afraid to admit when you don't know something. You just ask the question, and then you soak in the answer like it's the most important thing you've ever been told."

She tilts her head up, the same degree his has rotated down. She pictures the tiny remaining slice of diagonal space between them. "I like the way you gulp your wine. The huge bites you take. Like the world's there for you to dig your fingers into." She responds by pressing her hand harder into his shoulder.

"I want to go home with you." She whispers, and there it is again, that flash of surprise in him, as though everything about him she imagines as charm, carefully executed for the purpose of attraction, of allure, is actually just him. As though there's no drive behind it, no agenda, and he's startled to see someone respond to it so viscerally.

He elevates her chin a fraction further with his thumb, narrowing his widened eyes back into something lusty. "You're staying with Poe, right?" She nods in his hold.

He sighs. "I have to pick something up from work tonight. His apartment is only twelve blocks from my office. It'll take us ages to get to my place, and he won't be coming back home til very late tonight. So we'll go to his place instead."

She frowns. "How do you know he'll be coming home late?"

He smirks, slowly, chuffs out a laugh. "The second you left, Delphine stopped by our table."

"Delphine?" 

"One of the waitresses. French girl. She has a day job as a coder like you, actually. Leggy redhead. Poe's weakness," he explains in an amused, dry tone. "They flirt every time he's here. I could see it in the way they were speaking. Tonight's the night. He's going home with her." 

She finally smirks back. "So that leaves his place...available."

"Extremely available."

She wants to lick the shape of those words into his mouth, but something about this, the anticipation, makes her want to wait a little longer. Til they're alone, til his intensity can be witnessed by her and her alone. 

So she doesn't kiss him. She leans in close enough for their breath to mingle, then retreats a fraction. "We should probably get back."

She senses it in his gaze, too. The desire for this anticipation to keep building. To discover how hot the fever can really burn. 

With the slightest roll of her hips, she realizes he's hard. Her breath shudders out, she struggles to control her wandering brain, musing over what it must feel like, what it must look like.

When he steps back from her body the cold air rushes between them. She shivers and takes a huge gulp from the mug she still holds in one hand. The heat -and just as warming, the Bailey's- spreads through her.

She watches, breathless, as he slides off his coat and drapes it around her shoulders.

Cologne and Scotch tape and whiskey. There's nothing subtle about the way she inhales at the collar, but he just watches her steadily, nostrils a little flared, hands retreating to his pockets.

She strides past him and makes for the stairs, reveling in the feeling of making this man, so much in control, follow her.

The noise of the restaurant bounces down the tiled hallway when they return through that frosted glass door. She glances over her shoulder, almost loathe to lose the relative privacy of the roof, even though every moment that passes is one closer to their being completely alone.

His eyes are hard, as though he's contemplating the same thing, the reality that they have to return to light and noise and other people. 

A wordless growl behind her. _"To hell with it."_ A hand closes gently around her wrist.

She stumbles to a stop.

Despite the sharpness in his voice his free hand is utterly gentle as it weaves into her hair, his lips feather-light as they meet her. Barely brushing, when what she wants is to be crushed and consumed and ground into nothing against his heated skin. Despite the delicacy of the kiss, light as gossamer, she feels it in her cunt. 

The anticipation ticks a little higher.

Jannah shoots her another glance, eyeing the coat around her body, when the table is back in sight. Rey slides it off with a sigh and hands it back to him.

Sure enough, a tall, nymph-like redhead looms over Rey's empty seat, gaze riveted onto Poe. She scampers off when Rey and Kylo return to the table, but something in the final glance they share tells Rey that Kylo was right, Poe's apartment _will_ be free tonight.

Her creme brulee waits for her. As does his brandy. He sips, she eats. "Tell me more about your job," she asks, but her addled brain pays more attention to the intonation of his voice and the movements of his mouth, than she does to the words. 

He looks equally as addled, particularly when his words stop short, as she sucks some caramelized sugar off her spoon.

Poe pays her tab when she feigns being sleepy, while insisting that of course it's fine if he stays for another drink, she can get a Lyft back, and after all she has the key he gave her.

A few other people leave at the same time, the group of them departing to take the subway while she and Kylo remain near the hostess station, the last to get their coats.

The second the door closes behind his colleagues, he takes her hand. She peeks at him in the corner of her eye. He smiles.

\--------

Hours after Kylo caught Rey belting Gaga in the dining room, she bursts awake.

_I'm on the edge, of glo-ry._

Her phone.

She grabs it, squinting.

_KYLO NYC SEX._

She bolts upright. Her hands are shaking. "What's wrong? What do you need?"

He inhales sharply. "I'm fine," he says immediately.

She lays back down in bed, taking a breath. 

"Touch yourself." He demands.

Her deep breath stutters. "What?"

"You heard me," he insists, and fleeting moments of his command drift across her memory. On the roof of the restaurant. Their first night together. At the door, compelling her to eat.

"Are you?" She says on a raspy whisper, and his sheets stop rustling, she hears him go still.

"Yes."

She shudders. His voice only stokes the adrenaline still rushing through her system, when she first thought something might be wrong. Her body reshapes it, fashions it into something else.

Something good.

She sinks further into the bed, and begins tracing her fingers back and forth at the waistband of her leggings. "You are?"

"Yes." He repeats, "Thinking about you. Here for so long without touching me. Do you miss it?"

"Your body?"

"Us, together."

"Yes," she says, already sweating, "you got your hands on yourself?"

"Nothing like your hands, though." 

She gasps, her hand delving into her pants to seek out what waits there, what begs for him.

The first touch has her arching away from the mattress, her eyes slamming shut. He's ten feet below her, in that huge, messy bed, unable to wait til they could touch each other again, unable to even wait til morning, he was so desperate for her.

"What are you gonna do? When we can touch each other again?" She gasps, finger trailing from her clit to her entrance so gently. As gently as that first time he kissed her.

"Gonna fuck you in my bed," he whispers, "Then again. Til you're so exhausted you can't help but sleep here. Then as soon as we wake up, we're gonna do it another time."

She thinks of his last two weeks. The confrontation of his own mortality. The helplessness of it.

The desire for control he must have felt, when he realized he would live.

They may not be able to touch each other. But that doesn't mean she can't give him control. 

"You gonna hold me down there? Pin my arms while I arch under you and try to take all the pleasure you give me?"

" _Fuck,_ Rey."

"Kylo."

"Want you on your stomach again, like last time," and she mimics it now, flipping over, picturing the weight on her back is him instead of just the blankets. "So I can feel your whole body against me."

The teasing around her hole, contrasted with the heavy grinding of her fingers against her clit: they're enough.

Enough for her body to start climbing, inch by inch, and she realizes in this moment, with a suddenness that makes her body lurch, there's another measure of control she can give him.

"I'm gonna come," she tells him softly, "Kylo can I? Can I come?"

There's a second of silence, just harsh breaths and the shifting in his sheets, then finally he grates out, "No."

She may have chosen to let him have this, but she still cries out in frustration.

"You're gonna wait til I do first, want you to hear it. I want it to drive you crazy, before you get to finish."

She thrashes, lightening the pressure on her clit, obeying, holding off. She tells him as much, and she hears his breathing accelerate, tiny, tortured moans escaping from him unnoticed, and then it's not through the call that she hears him.

It's through the still air of the night, ringing through the house, three hoarse shouts, and she takes that as her cue.

She bears down hard onto the heel of her hand, hips gyrating in tiny, fast circles, his orgasm still echoing in her head, and it brings about her own.

She doesn't hold it back, and imagines her low, throaty moans reaching him the same way his had. 

They breathe together for a long moment, a slow deceleration, and she's still a little winded. "Next time that happens, you better be the one touching me instead."

"Done." He mutters shortly, and her face breaks into a grin. 

She sighs. "I uh, I needed that." Clears her throat. "Thank you."

He's quiet for a long time.

"Thank you feels so insufficient, for any of this, after everything that's happened."

"I feel the same way."

"Go to sleep now, baby. We both need to."

She nods, then remembers, despite the intimacy in his voice, he can't see her. 

"Yeah. Gotta get better. Can't touch you if you're not better."

"But the very second Phasma gives me the all-clear..." He trails off, then groans into the phone for a moment.

Rey stifles her giggles into her pillow. "Goodnight Kylo."

"Night Rey."

\--------

On Day 143, Rey sets down the tray, sits down at their outdoor table and slides the mask off her face. 

"Did they remember the extra hot sauce?" Kylo mutters, moving the basket of fries aside to hunt for the tiny plastic cup.

"Yeah." Rey lifts it out from behind her sandwich and slides it between them. 

She takes a deep breath of the briny air, glancing out at the water, squinting when she stares too long at the sun's reflection off the surface. 

Kylo grabs the sunglasses folded over the collar of his t-shirt and offers them to her. She accepts with a smile, then watches him take a gargantuan bite of his lobster roll.

"I can't wait until my taste comes back all the way," she mutters, watching him chew. "You shouldn't be adding the Tabasco either. You should know the sweet perfection of a Militia lobster roll, unadulterated."

"I don't imagine we'll be back here soon, but there's a seafood place in Brooklyn that's supposed to be great. House-made lemonade too."

"Ooh," Rey groans at the mere thought of the drink. Boston summers are humid, and despite their proximity to the water and the wisps of an ocean breeze, she's been sweaty, and slightly thirsty, for hours.

"We'll go to celebrate after you're back."

"Still good for Tuesday?"

"Yep. I'll pick up the truck that morning."

She nods, dunking three fries into her ketchup and then folding them in half as she jams them into her mouth.

"You really think you'll have everything packed in two days?"

She smirks. "I think you're overestimating how much stuff I have. One trip in the truck is all I need."

"But you know it's not like a moving truck, right? It's a Ford F-150."

She nods, downing two more fries.

"Rey," he says, that surety in his voice overwhelming and powerful. 

"Kylo."

"Do you ever think..." he trails off, takes another bite of his food, takes his time thinking, "that we're taking this too quickly? That maybe we like each other too much, and it's blinding us to the reality of this decision?"

Her hand draws back from the basket of fries and she stares out at the water for a moment, pushing his sunglasses back when they start to slide down his nose. 

"I think." She begins, and then does the same thing as him, shoveling a mouthful of fries to buy herself another moment to consider it, "I think that the world is new, and strange, and uncertain now." She moves their tray and slides over, closer to him on their bench seat. "And because of that, lots of new and strange things are part of it all. This is one of them. Not bad, just...different. Unexpected. We've told a dozen people now, even your mother, and no one's raised any concerns that we're making a bad choice."

His eyes, still trained on the sea, flicker around as he inclines his head once in acknowledgement. 

"I think everyone understands, like we do, that something _happened_ in there, in that house. Something that...I don't know...bound us together, or something. It's new and it's strange but no less so than everything else out there."

He nods, looking over and brushing some loosened tendrils of hair from her face. "This doesn't feel new or strange or uncertain." He leans in closer to her, breathes with mouth pressed near her ear. 

Rey sighs at the feeling of his lips gently brushing against her skin. "Maybe that's what tells you this is the right choice." 

He leans back, and that same current of unspoken understanding passes between them. The one they forged during endless days in each other's presence. Created in the countless nights they shared a bed before she had to return to Boston.

"I want you to drive carefully, when you come back down to get me." She's seen him in the Jaguar a few times, and he's more of a _safety third_ kind of guy, which she frankly cannot accept.

"It'll be fine, I-"

"No." Her tone brokers no argument, and his eyes dart up. "I did not survive COVID and you did not survive an extremely serious chest infection for you to get in some stupid car accident. Drive slow, drive safe. _No_ excuses."

He blinks for a long moment, finishing his food. Finally, he nods, then mutters under his breath, "Kinda nice to have you be the one bossing me around, for a change."

She blushes, which judging by his grin is the response he was hoping for. "Oh please," she mumbles back, "you love being in control."

He tips his head back and forth. "I'm willing to share."

She laughs, short and loud, offering him some of the last remaining fries and leaning back to lean into the shade. 

They don their masks and walk to the train. They keep the requisite three seats between themselves and others. They don't touch the poles, or the doors, or the handrails. They kiss goodbye and Kylo boards his above-ground train for New York, while Rey switches over to the Red line. 

She'll spend tonight in her old bed. She scarcely remembers what it's like to sleep alone. Nonetheless, she smiles, knowing soon she'll be back where she's come to belong.

Sharing the new, strange world with him.


End file.
